A short-story reading challenge in 2019

Lakey

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Hooboy. I have fallen further and further behind. I had one of those Alice Munro stories open on a tab at work for a while, but I only got through about half of it; work blew up on me. I will come back to it and others; I want to read them.

In the meantime, there’s always The New Yorker in my bathroom, so.

57. "Elliott Spencer," George Saunders, in The New Yorker (2019)
In the first few lines I thought this story would be gimmicky and tedious, with its fractured syntax and oddly italicized words; I did not expect to get very far. To my surprise, it sucked me in, and turned out to be very effective and affecting. It’s from the confused perspective of a man who has been brainwashed and is learning his new role in the world. I can’t really say more about it than that without getting into a lot of details. Very interesting stories. Incidentally, George Saunders is the author of Lincoln in the Bardo, which I haven’t read.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)

My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 

Lakey

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58. "Locker 13," Gill James, in Persimmon Tree (2019)
Persimmon Tree is a literary magazine by and for women over 60. Two of its editorial board members are friends of my mother’s; when my story “The Candlestick” was published last year, I got a lovely encouraging note about it from one of them, and then of course immediately felt awkward about writing a story about the death of a lonely sick old woman. Anyway I have been reading to read some more stories in Persimmon Tree for a while, so I read this one. It was all right. Once it got going, there was enough of a ring of suspense in it to keep it moving. I might have preferred a more uncertain ending, but that’s not the story the author wanted to write, and there’s nothing wrong with resolving the mystery rather than leaving it hanging.

59. “Tea Time in Salem,” Tamar Anolic, in Everyday Fiction (2019)
Another story by someone to whom I have a tangential connection, this time via an alumnae group. This is a bit of historical flash fiction — the setting is exactly what the reference to Salem might make you think it is, though there is a clear political allegory, as there was when Arthur Miller chose the same setting for his critique of McCarthyism, The Crucible. The story is all right. I think I am not a huge fan of flash fiction. I feel the two women in this story, their experiences and their emotions, need more room to breathe. I would have preferred to see this story three times as long!

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)

My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 
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Chris P

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112. "The Wives of the Dead," by Nathaniel Hawthorne

As with many stories of this vintage, I can't really describe it without revealing the ending. Mary and Margaret are the widows of two brothers, one a sailor and one an infantry man, having lost their husbands in separate incidents one day apart. Living together out of necessity, at the depths of their grief they retire to bed. Mary falls asleep first, leaving Margaret to answer a midnight caller who informs her that the reports of the massacre at the fort are false, and that her husband is alive and will arrive in a few days. Overjoyed, she nevertheless lets Mary sleep, this being the first Mary's heart has been at ease. Margaret sleeps relieved while Mary wakes, and answers a second caller who informs her that the shipwreck that supposedly claimed her husband had survivors, her husband among them. Mary sees Margaret sleeping peacefully, and decides to not disturb her. The story is kinda blah, but there is some gorgeous writing in this one: "Her face was turned partly inward to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionless contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within."


113. "Peter Rugg, The Missing Man," by William Austin.

By 1820, Peter Rugg and his daughter Jenny have been roaming New England for 50 years, not aging and with the same horse and chaise, ever since Peter got lost in a storm while returning to Boston. The storm follows Rugg, constantly drenching him as the roads and rivers change courses, leading him ever farther from Boston.


114. "Rip Van Winkle," by Washington Irving

I was going to say this is the one we all know, but upon reading it I wonder how much we really know it. I think there's been so many adaptations and retellings, many with a point to make or an axe to grind, that the original tale is different than I thought it would be. Anyway, hen-pecked, lazy and escapist Rip flees his sad home for a day of hunting in the mountains, where he comes across a group of men dressed one hundred and fifty years out of fashion partying. They offer him some booze, from which he falls asleep and wakes twenty years later. He's confused by stars and stripes flags and the election going on in the town, and how he recognizes no one. However, life might not be so bad now that Dame Van Winkle has gone to her reward and nobody expects an old man to be all that hard a worker.
 
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Lakey

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Back with another short-story-related Kindle deal: Best American Short Stories 2018 is on sale for $2.99 (at least in the US). This recent collection was edited by Roxane Gay, and gets mixed reviews, largely in reaction to her emphasis on marginalized voices. What those mixed reviews actually reflect about the quality of the stories is anyone's guess. I grabbed the collection in the sale and I'll let you know what I find.

:e2coffee:
 

Chris P

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It's quite good! I loked the marginalized voices from that anthology. I can see how someone might think the collection isn't very well rounded, but it was up my alley. I'll be interested to see what other think.
 

Lakey

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60. "Cougar," Maria Anderson, in Best American Short Stories 2018
This is a very well-written story about an indolent young man in rural Montana -- he describes his trailer as "a four-cigarette drive outside of town" -- and a series of losses he suffers. It really is quite a nice piece of writing, strongly voiced with details that are both striking and heavy with meaning. It is rather bleak and sad. I didn't have a strong emotional reaction to it at first, despite its technical quality, but it grew on me.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)

My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 
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Chris P

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I'm trying not to go back and re-read what I wrote about it then, so I can see what parts of the story stick with me. Cougar was very atmospheric. I remember the story itself was kinda blah, but the mood was set very well. Just a general sense of hopelessness and futility.
 

Lakey

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I'm trying not to go back and re-read what I wrote about it then, so I can see what parts of the story stick with me. Cougar was very atmospheric. I remember the story itself was kinda blah, but the mood was set very well. Just a general sense of hopelessness and futility.

I thought you might have read this anthology earlier in the year but I was too lazy to go back and find your descriptions. Now I found them— in mid-March, for reference. :D I’m continuing through the collection.

61. "Family," Jamel Brinkley, in Best American Short Stories 2018
A man’s emotional life is haunted by two events that occur at nearly the same time: the death of his semi-estranged best friend in an accidental house fire, and his own imprisonment for killing a woman while driving drunk. Released from prison more than a dozen years later, he struggles to move past both events, forming a relationship with the lover (or wife? it isn’t clear) of his dead friend and their son, and dreaming nightly of the woman he killed. This is also a beautifully-written story, though I wasn’t convinced of the woman’s interest in him; if she somehow recovered something of her dead lover by being with him, I don’t think that is convincingly portrayed, and the result is that she comes across more a plot device than an actual breathing character. Also the ending is too pat and beats the reader over the head with the story’s point, which is already obvious from the title.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)

My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 

Chris P

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Wow, I didn't remember that story at all, even after reading your then my write-ups. It seems like it was well done for the most part, with some deficiencies, but the fact I've so thoroughly forgotten it after only a few months is bizarre.
 

Lakey

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62. "The Art of Losing," Yoon Choi, in Best American Short Stories 2018
This story traverses two landscapes — a Korean immigrant experience, and the experience of dementia. It’s an interesting story, and very competently written, but there’s something a little by-the-numbers about it on both axes; it’s a mostly familiar story about immigrants, and a mostly familiar story about an elderly person struggling with dementia. The ending is resoundingly telegraphed, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but doesn’t do anything to cut through the feeling of “oh, yeah, this story,” the familiarity of it. There are a few things I really liked; the Korean wife’s ambivalent relationship with her next-door neighbor, an older white gentleman who is always giving her gifts that were “not free but finicky, and came with a burden of care,” gifts like a plant cutting that has to be handled just so. This microcosm of this Korean woman’s experience, where every joy and blessing in her life is counted in terms of meals cooked, socks mended, care given, is one thing that sets this story apart from many others of its ilk. There are sections from her point of view and from the husband’s (he is the one with dementia); sometimes I wonder if the story wouldn’t have been tighter if it had stuck with one perspective.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)

My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 
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Lakey

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Continuing along in Roxane Gay’s edition of Best American Short Stories:

63. "Los Angeles," Emma Cline, in Best American Short Stories 2018
This story is all right, despite its rather abrupt ending. I like the contradiction in the main character, Alice — a young woman who has come to LA to chase the dream of being an actor, while knowing that it’s a trite and hackneyed dream, and being rather conservative and reserved in other aspects of her personality. With the encouragement of a wilder coworker, Alice loosens up a little, which mostly means giving in to the seamier side of what Los Angeles has to offer, with results that one hopes aren’t as disastrous as Alice fears they are. One does suspect that she will return to her safe midwestern hometown after the story’s sudden ending, give up on the dream of being an actor, and perhaps go to dental school.

I’m not sure whether I’ll make it to 100 before the year is out. It might take a little concentrated effort, a small push or burst. That seems like a good thing for a goal to do.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)

My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 

Lakey

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A few more of Roxane Gay’s choices — these two are my favorites of the collection so far:

64. "Unearth," Alicia Elliott, in Best American Short Stories 2018
A lovely and sad story about a middle-aged woman who had her little brother and her Native American heritage torn away from her at around the same time when she was a child — the two were not unrelated, as the boy disappeared while attending a shady Christian school meant to “save” residents of the reservation. As the story opens, her brother’s bones have been found after half a century; the finding brings back to her mind everything else that was lost along with him. It didn’t seem like too much when I read it, but it has stuck with me. A very lovely story.

65. "Boys Go to Jupiter," Danielle Evans, in Best American Short Stories 2018
Wow; quite a gut punch in this one. A college girl makes some poor and thoughtless choices, acting out in loneliness and isolation that are the lingering aftermath of some losses she suffered as a teen. The upshot is that her thoughtlessness lands her at the vortex of a racial controversy on campus, which she then deliberately escalates more out of a sort of childish reactionary contrariness than out of actual malice. It’s hard to feel sympathy for a young white woman who shoves a Confederate flag postcard under the door of a Black student’s dorm room, and the story doesn’t exactly elicit sympathy for her, but it elicits something gentle — maybe pity? — something other than just pure disgust, anyway. The girl’s own tragic background is not any kind of excuse, but it does seem to be an explanation for her need to create trouble and then withdraw and react to it passively, letting others manipulate her deeper into the mess that she makes. A very thought-provoking story anyway, if nothing else.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)
65. "Boys Go to Jupiter," Danielle Evans, in Best American Short Stories 2018


My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 
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Chris P

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Lakey, both of those stories (64 and 65) are top notch. A couple of the best in the collection.

As much as I hated the MC in the "Boys Go to Jupiter" one, she is portrayed in a very real light; I feel like I could know her. Reading it I experienced the same feelings of betrayal I feel when a friend or someone I respect disappoints me. I wanted the MC's redemption, but in cases like this we don't always get that satisfaction. I was refreshed that the point of the story was not some phony equal-time "oppressed white folks" defense, but a very real depiction of how people behave sometimes.
 

Lakey

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As much as I hated the MC in the "Boys Go to Jupiter" one, she is portrayed in a very real light; I feel like I could know her. Reading it I experienced the same feelings of betrayal I feel when a friend or someone I respect disappoints me. I wanted the MC's redemption, but in cases like this we don't always get that satisfaction.
This is a great way to put it, this notion of betrayal. I know a story has got under my skin when the protagonist does something stupid and I find myself thinking "oh, honey, no!" This story did that to me. And while it's terribly bleak and depressing that she isn't redeemed by the end - rather erased, ignored, alone - it's also the right result. Any whiff of redemption would have been cloying, a morality tale rather than an examination of what drives ordinary people to do hurtful things.

Here's another story for my tally, from this week's New Yorker:

66. "Harbor," Garth Greenwell, in The New Yorker (2019)
This story doesn't do much for me. The narrator, attending a writing workshop in Bulgaria, goes with other workshop participants for a night-time walk through a mostly deserted town, feeling out of sorts because of a recently ended romance. Given its subject matter the story ought to feel very intimate, but it doesn't. The narrator doesn't even name the characters; at the most they get initials -- his ex-boyfriend is R, one of the men in the workshop is N, and so on. Not to second guess an author good enough and experienced enough to land in the New Yorker, but I wonder if it wouldn't have been better told in third person -- if a close third would have made it seem more intimate. And -- this part is very personal, but I feel the absence of women from this story; the maleness of it is heavy and oppressive. (There is one woman among the group of workshop participants, but she's only there to be an attractive target for one of the drunker men to latch on to.)

:e2coffee:
 

Tocotin

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Wow, I'm so behind with this challenge!

I just started reading Great Short Stories by American Women! I bought it a while ago, and actually had read maybe the first two pages of the first story, but it was too sad and bleak for me at that time, so I set it aside. I picked it up again today, and read the first story in two and a half sittings (on the train, and in between making pancakes). It's "Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis – a naturalistic story about people who worked themselves to death, and could expect nothing good from life, save for maybe some booze-induced moments of oblivion. If they experience vague yearnings for culture, art etc., they suffer even more. The story centers a guy, but I thought that the poor hunchbacked girl who was in love with him had it worse. It's a fatalistic, hopeless story – but I really loved the voice. It was poetic in the best sense of the word – lucid, melodious, and passionate.

:troll


------------
1. "Ginza Journal" by Seki Kenshi, 1882. From "Tokyo Centennial Tales vol.1", October 2018, Iwanami Shoten.
2. "Kong Yiji" by Lu Xun, 1919. From "Call to Arms", May 2006, Iwanami Shoten.
3. "The Lifted Veil" by George Eliot. 1856. Kindle edition, Serenity Publishers, 2006.
4. "Medical Training" by Tazawa Inabune, 1895. From "Tokyo Centennial Tales vol.1", October 2018, Iwanami Shoten.
5. "The Good Deaths, part II", by Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2014.
6. "A Madman's Diary" by Lu Xun, 1918. From "Call to Arms", May 2006, Iwanami Shoten.
7. "Mr Salary" by Sally Rooney, reprinted in Irish Times, 2017.
8. "Brother Jacob" by George Eliot, 1864. Kindle edition, Serenity Publishers, 2006.
9. "After the Ball" by Leo Tolstoy, 1903. Kindle edition, 2014.
10. "A Big Sake Cup" by Kawakami Bizan, 1895. From "Tokyo Centennial Tales vol.1", October 2018, Iwanami Shoten.
11. "Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis, 1861. From "Great Short Stories by American Women", Dover Publications, 2014.
 

Lakey

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67. "A History of China," Carolyn Ferrell, in Best American Short Stories 2018
More experimental in structure than the others in the collection so far; this story consists of a second-person main story with third-person flashbacks. I suppose it is about family, about how families relate to each other and how family secrets generate rifts. It’s a good story, though I didn’t find it grabbing my heartstrings quite like the previous two. In fact, I had a story question that nagged at me through the whole thing and sort of ruined the experience. I won’t get into the details here but the basic premise of the story made no sense to me; not sure whether I missed a detail or what.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)
65. "Boys Go to Jupiter," Danielle Evans, in Best American Short Stories 2018


My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 

Chris P

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Yep, "A History of China" was a tough one. It's ones like these that pull me between feeling unschooled and inadequate for not getting it, and concluding that the story just wasn't executed well. I had to read my post to remember it, and I got a sense that it is somehow an allegory of the immigrant experience in America but I'm not sure about that.
 

Lakey

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68. "Come on, Silver," Ann Glaviano, in Best American Short Stories 2018
I liked this story. A teen girl is at a bizarre coming-of-age summer camp with a kind of Handmaid’s Tale vibe. She is instructed to write letters to her “Dear Future Husband;” it’s not clear right away whether the identity of this man is already determined (it isn’t), but at any rate, she is quickly censured for the content of her letters and turns instead to writing in a clandestine diary that she hides in a box of sanitary napkins. (I liked this detail; though her minders are women, it is a standard joke among women that you can hide anything you like from men by putting it in with your menstrual supplies.) The girl goes on to have a very sexually suggestive (and possibly entirely metaphorical) bareback ride on a horse with a strapping male instructor. Eventually, despite being very uncomfortable in her female skin, she is chosen to represent the pinnacle of burgeoning womanhood in a peculiar symbolic ritual.

I looked back at ChrisP’s comments on this story, and find it interesting how little the story resonated with him and how much it resonated with me. To me, this isn’t a story about summer camp; it’s an allegory about the socialization of girls and women, about the relentless pressure we face to be sexy but also to be pure; to be assertive but not too assertive, and only when we are invited by authority to be assertive; to be forever infantilized and also be appropriately womanly. It’s an allegory too about the complicity in (and necessity of) women in perpetuating patriarchal norms. ChrisP sees “a summer camp fixated on menstruation;” I see the entirety of patriarchal socialization in microcosm.

The story grows on me the more I think about it, and is getting added to my favorites list.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)
65. "Boys Go to Jupiter," Danielle Evans, in Best American Short Stories 2018
68. "Come on, Silver," Ann Glaviano, in Best American Short Stories 2018


My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 
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Chris P

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Perhaps the meaning of the story was hidden within the box of pads? :) I can see the allegories you mentioned once they're pointed out. I usually catch those. There was just something about the voice that made it seem like shallow storytelling to me. Or, and this is totally possible, the patriarchy is so ingrained it's invisible to me. Me not being able to recognize male privilege is proof it's real.
 

DanielSTJ

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I'm jumping back on this tomorrow. For the rest of the year, I want to read 50 more short stories AT LEAST. We'll see how I do. I'll comb these pages for ones that I find appealing.
 

Tocotin

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Welcome back, Daniel!

I finished another story by Lu Xun, "Medicine". It's another horribly pessimistic and cannibalistic one; it deals with an old folk superstition, according to which a steamed bun dipped in fresh human blood is a cure-all medicine. A father buys such a bun for a lot of money; it is supposed to cure his son who is ill with tuberculosis. The blood comes from a young revolutionary who has been executed in the morning. I didn't like this story as much; I thought it was a bit too simplistic and ideologically inclined.

The thing I liked the most about it is a little piece of background info. The revolutionary's name, Xia 夏 ("summer") is an allusion to Qiu Jin, who was beheaded when she was only 31 years old, and who was a friend of Lu Xun's; her name, Qiu 秋, means "autumn". She was a poet and a feminist, and she studied in Japan, so I'm going to find out more about her.
:troll

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1. "Ginza Journal" by Seki Kenshi, 1882. From "Tokyo Centennial Tales vol.1", October 2018, Iwanami Shoten.
2. "Kong Yiji" by Lu Xun, 1919. From "Call to Arms", May 2006, Iwanami Shoten.
3. "The Lifted Veil" by George Eliot. 1856. Kindle edition, Serenity Publishers, 2006.
4. "Medical Training" by Tazawa Inabune, 1895. From "Tokyo Centennial Tales vol.1", October 2018, Iwanami Shoten.
5. "The Good Deaths, part II", by Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2014.
6. "A Madman's Diary" by Lu Xun, 1918. From "Call to Arms", May 2006, Iwanami Shoten.
7. "Mr Salary" by Sally Rooney, reprinted in Irish Times, 2017.
8. "Brother Jacob" by George Eliot, 1864. Kindle edition, Serenity Publishers, 2006.
9. "After the Ball" by Leo Tolstoy, 1903. Kindle edition, 2014.
10. "A Big Sake Cup" by Kawakami Bizan, 1895. From "Tokyo Centennial Tales vol.1", October 2018, Iwanami Shoten.
11. "Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis, 1861. From "Great Short Stories by American Women", Dover Publications, 2014.
12. "Medicine" by Lu Xun, 1919. From "Call to Arms", May 2006, Iwanami Shoten.
 

Lakey

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Perhaps the meaning of the story was hidden within the box of pads? :)
:D Chris, I appreciate your openness to the meaning I saw in this story and why it might not have resonated with you. The kind of contradictory and oppressive social pressures that girls and women experience are so relentless and familiar to us, that the story doesn’t even seem subtle to me. Indeed, if I had to criticize it, it would be that some of the metaphors were TOO on-the-nose! (And anyone who has read my writing knows that I love me an unsubtle metaphor.)

Having said that, I’ve read a couple of stories about gay men recently (one I talk about below; one a few posts ago) that didn’t do a damn thing for me, and there’s probably a great deal of that experience echoed in those stories in ways that I don’t recognize or relate to. My point is that we all bring our own experiences to the stories we read, and they will resonate or not, accordingly.

I finished another story by Lu Xun, "Medicine". It's another horribly pessimistic and cannibalistic one; it deals with an old folk superstition, according to which a steamed bun dipped in fresh human blood is a cure-all medicine.
Oh please please please let this superstition be true. :D

The thing I liked the most about it is a little piece of background info. The revolutionary's name, Xia 夏 ("summer") is an allusion to Qiu Jin, who was beheaded when she was only 31 years old, and who was a friend of Lu Xun's; her name, Qiu 秋, means "autumn". She was a poet and a feminist, and she studied in Japan, so I'm going to find out more about her.
You read the most interesting stuff!

Okay, onward for me:

69. "What got into us," by Jacob Guajardo, in Best American Short Stories 2018
A story about two boys exploring their sexuality; didn’t do much for me, I’m afraid. The boys’ relationship to one another is closer to brothers than to friends; their mothers live together, and it’s ambiguous whether the mothers are also lovers. Anyway the nature of their family bond made me very uncomfortable with the boys’ sexual relationship, which might have been the point for all I know, but it doesn’t make for enjoyable reading.

Also I wonder if the self-conscious narrative structure interfered for me. It’s in a first-person present tense, but the present is the summer when the boys are 14, and events that occurred after that are told in the future tense, and I don’t see the point. I also found myself wondering, again, if I have some kind of bias against first-person narratives. I don’t categorically dislike them — some of my favorite books, etc. (and Tocotin, before you start to worry, yours is one I couldn’t imagine any other way <3) — but often when I’m not enjoying a first-person story I start imagining it in third person and think I might find it less contrived and more intimate that way.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)
65. "Boys Go to Jupiter," Danielle Evans, in Best American Short Stories 2018
68. "Come on, Silver," Ann Glaviano, in Best American Short Stories 2018


My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 

Lakey

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70. "Bullet in the Brain," Tobias Wolff, in The New Yorker (1995)

Elle mentioned this story in a recent SYW post so I went to take a look. It’s a startling story, not just because of the event advertised by its title (which, because of the title, you know is coming), but because of its lurching changes in narrative distance. It starts very distant; the opening paragraph contains a description of the main character, Anders, that sounds like something from a resume rather than something in his POV. The story moves into his POV quickly enough, as you see his irritation with the people and things around him, all of which he finds beneath him in one way or another.

Then the bullet comes, and suddenly we are extremely clinical, describing the bullet’s trajectory the way Medical Examiner Rogers briefs the detectives on Law & Order, describing the firing of neurons like a college professor at a blackboard.

Finally, though, the story dives into Anders’s memories, his “life flashing before his eyes” (with acknowledgement of the cliché) and ends in a terrifically intimate way, with the echoing trace of a single moment.

What strikes me about these narrative shifts is their deliberateness, their intentionality. I might critique a writer in SYW who presents such inconsistent narrative distance, but Tobias Wolff knows what he is doing. He takes you by the hand and jerks you in and out of Anders’s brain.

I am also reminded of the protagonist’s demise in Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Blunderer; if you’ll pardon a spoiler, he dies by being stabbed repeatedly in the face, an event described from his POV. Highsmith’s description of the experience of being violently murdered is neither as clinical as Wolff’s bullet trajectory, nor quite as intimate as Wolff’s deep-dive into Anders’s pinpoint memories. It’s gritty and visceral and in the moment. Quite an interesting comparison, anyway.

:e2coffee:

_______________________


Goal for 2019: 100 short stories

Favorites of the year:
1. “Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Jean Stafford, in The New Yorker (1948)
9. “William Wilson,” Edgar Allen Poe, in Tales of Mystery and Imagination
12. “The Good Deaths, Part II,” Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2014)
24. "A whale, a tree, a vine," Sarah Norek, in West Branch (2018)
28. “American Gothic,” Dan Moreau, in Third Coast (2018)
31. “Cut,” Catherine Lacey, in The New Yorker (2019)
51. "The Sinkhole," Joyce Li, in Brooklyn Review (2018)
52. "Paper House," Stefan Kiesbye, in Delay (2019)
54. "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment," Mary McCarthy, in The Company She Keeps (1942)
65. "Boys Go to Jupiter," Danielle Evans, in Best American Short Stories 2018
68. "Come on, Silver," Ann Glaviano, in Best American Short Stories 2018


My list of stories from the first half of the year is here.
 

Tocotin

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A few days ago I read "Transcendental Wild Oats" by Louisa May Alcott. Oh, I absolutely loved the title, but the story was sad and, frankly, infuriating – I mean that the content was infuriating, not the writing itself, although, well... maybe the writing was too, a bit, now that I think about it.

It's a semi-autobiographical tale of a tiny religious community, whose members are supposed to rely on themselves only, not use medicine or modern inventions, not eat or use animals, etc. The burden of everyday care for the children and menfolk alike rests on the shoulders of the sole woman in the group; you can imagine how it went. The voice of the piece is light and cheerful, sometimes forcedly, unnaturally so. I wanted most of the characters to die and no one did. Gah! I guess it was too gentle and forgiving for my tastes (and I like to think I'm VERY forgiving!)

@Lakey: I also read "Bullet in the Brain"! I liked the bravura with which the author made me immediately care for the main character – not much, mind, but more than I thought. I liked the way the narrator pulled me by the hand through the story, a little forcefully, but not unkindly.

:troll

--------
1. "Ginza Journal" by Seki Kenshi, 1882. From "Tokyo Centennial Tales vol.1", October 2018, Iwanami Shoten.
2. "Kong Yiji" by Lu Xun, 1919. From "Call to Arms", May 2006, Iwanami Shoten.
3. "The Lifted Veil" by George Eliot. 1856. Kindle edition, Serenity Publishers, 2006.
4. "Medical Training" by Tazawa Inabune, 1895. From "Tokyo Centennial Tales vol.1", October 2018, Iwanami Shoten.
5. "The Good Deaths, part II", by Angela Ambroz, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2014.
6. "A Madman's Diary" by Lu Xun, 1918. From "Call to Arms", May 2006, Iwanami Shoten.
7. "Mr Salary" by Sally Rooney, reprinted in Irish Times, 2017.
8. "Brother Jacob" by George Eliot, 1864. Kindle edition, Serenity Publishers, 2006.
9. "After the Ball" by Leo Tolstoy, 1903. Kindle edition, 2014.
10. "A Big Sake Cup" by Kawakami Bizan, 1895. From "Tokyo Centennial Tales vol.1", October 2018, Iwanami Shoten.
11. "Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis, 1861. From "Great Short Stories by American Women", Dover Publications, 2014.
12. "Medicine" by Lu Xun, 1919. From "Call to Arms", May 2006, Iwanami Shoten.
13. "Transcendental Wild Oats" by Louisa May Alcott, 1873. From "Great Short Stories by American Women", Dover Publications, 2014.
14. "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff, 1995.
 

DanielSTJ

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I'm going back through the lists created and working my way through. Here's where I'm at:

Boulevard- David Nimon
Children Are Bored on Sunday- Jean Stafford
Spring- Daisy Johnson
Kong Yiji- Lu Xun
Let the Devil Sing- Allegra Hyde
A Suburban Weekend- Lisa Taddeo
Do I Look Sick To You? (Notes On How to Make Love to a Cancer Patient- C.J Hribavl
Brace Yourself- Leslie Jill Patterson
Involution- Stacy Hardy

All of these were good and had something to offer me. I really think reading more short stories is going to improve my craft, so I'll keep on it! :)