"Buoyancy" by Richard Russo

This week's story is pulled from Richard Russo's short story collection, The Whore's Child, and was selected by my husband, who wanted a piece of the fame and fortune I have generated from my blog.

"Buoyancy" follows Paul and June Snow, a couple in their retirement years, on a long-awaited trip to Martha's Vineyard.  Though I doubt it was his intention, it was a perfect story to discuss with my husband, because there are all sorts of interesting themes lurking beneath the surface: love, marriage, gender, and aging.

June once had a breakdown, one in which she revealed to Paul her "almost unbearable regret and sadness," but from my read, June has recovered quite nicely; it is Paul who seems most paranoid that every flinch of June's will result in her next hospitalization.  It is June who bravely peels off her bathing suit on the nude beach on Martha's Vineyard.  It is June who rescues Paul from his sunburn-induced hallucination.

Paul eventually realizes that, "it was foolish and arrogant...to think you could imagine the truth of another human life," even after decades of marriage.  The theme of nakedness runs throughout the story: how we reveal and cover ourselves, particularly from those closest to us.  It is a story about the counterintuitive moments of life, when what should get easier becomes harder, when the routes we should know best leave us lost, and how sometimes our own selves can betray us after something as seemingly innocuous as a little too much sun.

The title is worthy of conversation and had me asking whether human beings are buoyant.  After some googling I can leave you with this definitive answer: If we don't swim, we sink.

"The Kugelmass Episode" by Woody Allen

Woody Allen writes short stories...who knew?  

Thank you to my Fiction I Writing professor at Gotham, Season Harper-Fox, for sharing this story with my class as an example of plotting.  

There are three things I learned from/loved about this story:

1. I like to play the "Who would be cast in the leading role?" game when I read.  The only person on earth who should ever play Professor Kugelmass is Woody Allen himself.  That led me to realize that while I've been trying to "get less autobiographical" in my writing, I could do much worse in life than to emulate Woody Allen's approach.  Tell me that Girls is not autobiographical Lena Dunham.  Tell me that This is 40 is not pulled almost entirely from Judd Apatow's own marriage.  Write what you know or make up an entirely new world; just do what works for you.

2. Allen summarizes his entire backstory in his opening paragraph.

Kugelmass, a professor of humanities at City College, was unhappily married for the second time.  Daphne Kugelmass was an oaf.  He also had two dull sons by his first wife, Flo, and was up to his neck in alimony and support.  

Backstory is my arch nemesis and this was an example of how you can meet your backstory head on, shake its hand, and then move forward with your story.  The albatross of backstory must be shed!

3. Kugelmass enters the novel Madame Bovary with the help of a magician and proceeds to have a passionate and complicated love affair with Emma Bovary.  I had just finished reading Madame Bovary and felt very frustrated by Flaubert's treatment of her.  I think Flaubert was a big-time jerk and grade A misogynist; I hold him personally responsible for Emma's tragic death.  It was quite lovely to see her having a little fun with Kugelmass in modern day New York City, even though their love affair was doomed to fail in light of the professor's various neuroses and commitment issues, not to mention the pressures that time travel places on a relationship.  

You can access "The Kugelmass Episode" online.  

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger

If you follow me on Twitter, you know one of my new life goals is to own the most rockin' short story collection in all the land.  Because I'm trying to pull stories from various genres and time periods, I am relying a great deal on my library to support my short story habit, but I'm going to purchase a few books along the way to get my collection on point: Nine Stories seemed a great place to start.

"Bananafish" is the first story in Salinger's Nine Stories, a perfect little book. There are few things in life I love more than a book small enough to fit in my purse.

The story opens with a woman name Muriel: "She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing."  If I had to cast her, I'd choose Scarlett Johansson at her most inaccessible.  Halfway through the story, the omniscient narrator shifts his focus to Seymour Glass, Muriel's husband.  We have learned from Muriel's phone conversation with her mother that Seymour is a ticking time bomb.  The scene where he takes little Sybil, a fellow tourist at their hotel, into the water for a swim, is ripe with portent.  I have already lost one Sybil this year via Downton Abbey and was not prepared to lose another.

The ending is unexpected and swift, so much so that you will find yourself reading it twice to be sure you got it right.

"Bananafish" was published in The New Yorker on January 31, 1948, three years before The Catcher and the Rye rose to fame.  The story is notable for its insight into Salinger's mind at work before his masterpiece, in its treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder before we called it that, and for its unique point of view and ability to build suspense without every delving inside of its characters' minds.

"Miriam" by Truman Capote

"Miriam" scared the bejesus out of me---the kind of scared where you feel something behind you and you want to look to prove yourself wrong but you can't-- what if Miriam's there?

I know Capote best for In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's, but "Miriam" won him the O. Henry award in 1946.  For anyone looking to enjoy a short story that will grab you by the neck and freak you the beep out until you beg for mercy, this is the story for you.

Mrs. H.T. Miller, widow extraordinaire, decides to take in a film at the local theater, and why not?  She's a single lady living alone with no one to answer to but herself.  No one, that is, until she meets Miriam, a little girl with long white hair, a plum coat, and a demanding temperament.

The writing here is impeccable.  It is a master course in suspense---building slowly, perhaps even innocently, luring you in and then, and then....shivers.  It's the best kind of writing: invisible.  You are in the story with Mrs. Miller: as she answers the door, as she runs downstairs, and as she opens her eyes to the sight of Miriam.

Since last night, I've read various interpretations of what Miriam is or what she represents, and I'm still undecided.  I know two things for sure: Miriam is scary as hell and I will be tracking down more Capote short stories.

"The Rememberer" by Aimee Bender

In a strange coincidence, I came upon Bender's story, a surreal exploration of reverse evolution, on the same day I read some Charlie Darwin for my Coursera Philosophy class.  I love coincidences; they make me feel like I'm the star of my very own movie.  

Bender is the author of numerous award-winning short stories and a novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which is a lovely sounding title isn't it?  I was thinking about how lovely for about two seconds before I was overwhelmed with hunger.  

"The Rememberer" is the story of Annie and Ben.  Ben undergoes a curious metamorphosis one evening, transforming from a brooding boyfriend into a baboon.  When he finally becomes a salamander, Annie, like many women who came before her, realizes he can never meet her emotional and physical needs, and she promptly drops him into the ocean.

But maybe the joke's on Annie, because Ben gets the best dialogue in the story:

On his last human day, he said, "Annie, don't you see? We're all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there's too much thought and not enough heart." 

I love when writers throw convention out the window, whether in form or in content, and Bender succeeds here by starting with a bizarre premise that she connects to very real and legitimate questions about self in society.  These are heavy questions that Bender presents lightly, like a piece of sweet lemon cake.  I prefer mine gluten-free.  

You can access a non-bootleg version of the story online, thanks to The Missouri Review.  Happy reading.  

"Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" & "Brownies" by ZZ Packer

Yes, ladies and gentleman, today we are showing a double feature!  Today's stories belong to ZZ Packer, a darling of the literary scene who was published by The New Yorker at the age of 27.  I will try not to let my insane jealousy impact my post.

In thinking about my reaction to these two stories, "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" and "Brownies", I found an interview Ms. Packer gave where she discussed how her identify impacts her writing.

They asked, "Would you consider yourself a black writer?" And I said, "Of course, because I’m black. And I am a writer." (laughs) There is no other way to say that. But what he meant to say was, did I consider myself a writer who writes solely for black people? Or, who is my audience? To that I would just say, "No, I am writing for black people, but I am also writing for whites, for Chinese, for Americans." So, it’s one of those things that, yeah, the stories are definitely going to be influenced by the fact that I am black.

Both stories deftly investigate how the personal lives of Packer's characters are influenced by race and class, and I'm sure there are a myriad of analyses you can seek out  that will more aptly discuss reading Packer thought that lens.  I'm most interested in the writing: characters, plot, exposition.

I read "Brownies" first, though Packer wrote it after "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere".  It tells the story of a little girl called Snot (an unfortunate childhood nickname) who is away at camp with her Brownie troop, brazenly led by the cruel and cutting Arnetta.  Arnetta is a young Regina George from the movie Mean Girls.  I loved every second of hating her.  I want an Arnetta movie, an Arnetta book, and an Arnetta t-shirt.  She's perfectly wicked.  Her plot for revenge against rival troop #909 fails in the most unexpectedly sad and funny way that will brand itself in your mind for days to come.  

"Brownies" looks at what happens to those who've been cast aside.  In some souls, kindness and compassion bloom.  In others, malignant forces take hold.  Snot realizes that, "When you've been made to feel bad for so long, you jump at the chance to do it to others." 

Dina, the main character in Packer's "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere," feels like Snot all grown up.  She's a self-described misanthrope who may or may not be struggling with her sexual identity as a freshman at Yale, and who is most definitely struggling to fit into the privileged world of the Ivy League.  I liked being inside Dina's head, but this, Packer's earlier story of the two, is certainly more raw and less controlled than the more self-assured "Brownies".  In "Brownies", Packer is so good that you don't see the writing.  You aren't sitting on your couch listening to your kid talk about his Legos in the background.  You are at Camp Crescendo as seen through the eyes of Snot.

I love Packer's style.  It flows effortlessly.  Both of these stories felt like I was reading someone's autobiography: true and alive.

You can access "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" on The New Yorker site for free. 

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin

The first time I heard Le Guin's name was in the movie, "The Jane Austen Book Club."  If you haven't seen it, please do.  It's a lovely little movie and for those of you who don't already know, I'm strangely drawn to all movies starring Emily Blunt.  One weekend I think I unintentionally watched three in a row.  In the movie, the adorable Hugh Dancy plays Grigg, this strange little man who was raised in a home full of women.  He's a big Le Guin fan and described her work with contagious enthusiasm.

I took a stab at "The Left Hand of Darkness" but couldn't make it happen.  I think it was during the time in my life when my son still wasn't sleeping through the night and I had the attention span of a moth.  

I'm pleased to report that Le Guin is one of the few authors in the short story anthology I'm working through that seems to have lived a happy life.  

As I read through the bios in this book the other day, I said to my husband, "All of these people died young, after toiling in obscurity and suffering from severe depression."  He said, "Hemingway didn't toil in obscurity."  When Hemingway is your example of a happy ending, you're in trouble.

Which brings me to Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."  It's a Hugo award winner (big shot science fiction award) and was written in 1975.

The story opens with two very long paragraphs filled with dense prose, but please, if you have the attention span of a moth, keep going.  There's something special here.  The people of Omelas are blessed.  It's a utopian society.  The realist in me was thinking, "You can't write a story about happy people, as proven by Matthew's recent murder on Downton Abbey."  Yes you read right.  He was murdered in cold blood.  Damn you Julian Fellowes!

Don't worry your cynical minds and hearts though, because of course there is a cost for their happiness.  If you are a fan of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" or of "The Hunger Games", you will connect with this story.  It uses the scapegoat device in an unexpected twist that had me struggling to fall asleep last night.  I recommend you read this immediately before happy hour so you can have a cocktail to drown your sorrows.

In the interview that follows the story, Le Guin talks about where she finds inspiration and the origin of the name Omelas.  Apparently, she enjoys reversing the letters in street signs.  Omelas was pulled from a sign she saw that said Salem, Oregon.  I love the lesson there: Find inspiration by turning the mundane upside down.

I've been struggling with whether I should post links to what are probably bootleg websites so that readers can access these stories on their own.  I realized that half of the fun of reading short stories comes from tracking them down on your own, whether through Google, a visit to your local library (my personal favorite), or by actually buying a book.  I'll leave you to it.

"Neighbors" by Raymond Carver

This is my second dive into Carver's waters, following my reading of "Cathedral" in the fall.  I have a strange reaction to Carver, in that his minimalism speaks to my frugal heart but it still leaves me feeling cold.  There are few things that turn me off more than dense prose.  Carver shoots straight to the heart of the matter.

The challenge for me as a reader is that when I finish a Carver story, I'm always left thinking, and rarely left feeling.  A good Ann Hood story can leave me melted like hot butter, but Carver?  Reading his stories is sort of like when you would stick a pin under the top layer of finger flesh as a kid and marvel at how you felt no pain.  He's a master, few would deny that, but I don't connect with his characters.  

Neighbors tells the story of a couple, Bill and Arlene, who are asked (or who offers perhaps) to housesit for their neighbors, Harriet and Jim.  Bill and Arlene are compelled to make themselves a little too much at home in Harriet and Jim's apartment, and proceed to drink their booze, wear their skirts (Bill, not Arlene) and borrow their prescription pills.  Carver tells us that Bill and Arlene are disillusioned with their own lives, which pales in comparison to the lives of their friends.  I imagine they were also motivated to commit these neighborly sins because they knew they could get away with it.  These were, of course, the days before nanny cams hidden in teddy bears and ornamental vases.  It's been said that you are who you are when nobody is watching.  

I wonder if Bill and Arlene noticed that their neighbors' lives were quite similar to their own.  They took pills, drank decent booze, and hung their clothes in the closet just like the next guy.  I have to believe if given the chance to speak, we'd find some envy beneath Jim and Harriet's kicky facade.

For me, this story is about what happens when our rebellious subconscious is allowed a moment of release.  Our own lives can feel so constrained at times.  I bet when Bill put on that skirt, he felt like a million bucks.  We aren't privy to the details of Arlene's secret apartment capers, but we can imagine they are equally as bizarrely mundane.

I'm paying a lot of attention to endings these days, as my own confidence as a writer seems to fall apart in that last paragraph, and I thought this was a perfect, deceptively simple, quirky ending.  I won't dare spoil it for you.