A few more stories!
35. “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson, in The Lottery and Other Stories
This was mentioned in my workshop so I pulled it out for a reread -- this is one of those stories everyone should reread once in a while, I think. It's a great example of a story that draws power from what isn't said as much as what is said. Throughout the entire story, until the very end, we are never told what the Lottery actually is, or what awaits the "winner". It is clever because not only does it create curiosity in the mind of the reader, it also shows how deeply ingrained in the townsfolk the idea of the Lottery is, completely familiar and unchallengeable. The entire meaning of the story is embedded in subtext. I first read this story in sixth or seventh grade, far too long ago for me to remember what my experience of it the first time was, when I didn't know what the Lottery was about. I wish I could get that experience back again! (The story was very controversial when it was first published in the New Yorker. Lots of readers didn't like that the meaning of the story required thought to grasp. Jackson's biographer wrote a little about that here.)
36. "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried," Amy Hempel, in Fictionaut (2010)
A sweet, sad story about the narrator's attempt to cope with her best friend's imminent death.
37. "Faith in a Tree," Grace Paley, in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
I've been picking my way through this Grace Paley collection for about a year, and decided I ought to polish it off. Faith is Grace Paley's alter ego, a character who appears again and again in her stories; she's featured in most (if not all? I would have to check) of the stories in this collection. In this story, Faith sits in a tree surveying the park where the children are playing and the neighborhood mothers are gossiping. She judges them from this elevated, distant, spot, but Faith herself is never immune from judgment, and she eventually jumps down from the tree and joins the fray.
37/100 read, 24/50 from the last five years. I'm still a little off my pace, but it feels catch-up-able.
35. “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson, in The Lottery and Other Stories
This was mentioned in my workshop so I pulled it out for a reread -- this is one of those stories everyone should reread once in a while, I think. It's a great example of a story that draws power from what isn't said as much as what is said. Throughout the entire story, until the very end, we are never told what the Lottery actually is, or what awaits the "winner". It is clever because not only does it create curiosity in the mind of the reader, it also shows how deeply ingrained in the townsfolk the idea of the Lottery is, completely familiar and unchallengeable. The entire meaning of the story is embedded in subtext. I first read this story in sixth or seventh grade, far too long ago for me to remember what my experience of it the first time was, when I didn't know what the Lottery was about. I wish I could get that experience back again! (The story was very controversial when it was first published in the New Yorker. Lots of readers didn't like that the meaning of the story required thought to grasp. Jackson's biographer wrote a little about that here.)
36. "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried," Amy Hempel, in Fictionaut (2010)
A sweet, sad story about the narrator's attempt to cope with her best friend's imminent death.
37. "Faith in a Tree," Grace Paley, in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
I've been picking my way through this Grace Paley collection for about a year, and decided I ought to polish it off. Faith is Grace Paley's alter ego, a character who appears again and again in her stories; she's featured in most (if not all? I would have to check) of the stories in this collection. In this story, Faith sits in a tree surveying the park where the children are playing and the neighborhood mothers are gossiping. She judges them from this elevated, distant, spot, but Faith herself is never immune from judgment, and she eventually jumps down from the tree and joins the fray.
37/100 read, 24/50 from the last five years. I'm still a little off my pace, but it feels catch-up-able.