The Irony of a Short Story Blog

It's a SHORT story right?  And this is a blog, not the NY Times.  But alas, I haven't made the time to read a story and post my response in over a month.  How can that be?

Work, holidays, family, The Good Wife Seasons 1-4, writing, exercise….and these 24 hours we are given seven times each week quickly disappear.  

I'm taking a look at my priorities this week as my spring semester looks to be busier than ever, and that's going to mean some tough choices about how I spend my time.

I don't know if Shorty will continue to Get Down, and I know that all three of you reading this are very sad about that.

But it might.  I mean, they are SHORT stories after all.

So if you've happened on this blog trust that I still love short stories and I hope you'll take the time to peruse what I've read and recommended over the past six months.  

Stay tuned….

"The Briefcase" by Rebecca Makkai

I started reading this short story two weeks ago.  I finished a couple of pages, loved it, and then set the book down.  Two weeks passed.  This is not a reflection of Rebecca Makkai's cool and inventive story, but of the time management challenges faced by writers and readers everywhere.  My son must be fed.  My body must be cleaned.  My work must be done.  As essential as writing and reading are in my life, sadly, sometimes they get pushed to the side.  The good news is that I always manage to course correct.  I sit down with my planner in front of me and I make time like some people make cookies.  I can't make cookies to save my life, but I can turn my daily planner into a living and breathing thing with nothing more than the force of my will and a perfectly sharpened pencil.  Yesterday writing was pushed aside.  Today, I write.  There's always today.

Now for the story.  I pulled out the 2009 version of The Best American Short Stories a couple of weeks ago with the intention of picking a story whose title jumped out at me.  To begin, Alice Sebold edited that year's collection and I adore what I've read of hers, including Lucky and The Lovely Bones.  Sebold's memoir, Lucky, which details her sexual assault in college and its aftermath, took place at my own alma mater, Syracuse University.  Years after Seebold's attack, I played frisbee and had picnics in the park where she was raped, never knowing the sad legacy that park held in its history.  If you've only read The Lovely Bones and haven't yet made it to Lucky, do read it.

I chose Rebecca Makkia's story, "The Briefcase," because a briefcase seems like something that almost always holds a secret.  Today, they also feel like a bit of an anachronism, like the businessperson's version of Blockbuster Video, as more offices go paperless and iPads or netbooks replace our thick stacks of papers and reports.

I've been thinking in terms of Goal, Motivation, and Conflict in my writing lately so I'm going to approach my reading of this story with those concepts in mind.

Goal: The unnamed prisoner escapes his bondage in what I read as a dystopian future, though I suppose it could have also been in a not-so distant past, or even in the present.  When the guards see that a man is missing from their line, rather than taking the time to hunt him down, they replace him with the first man they see on the street: a professor carrying a briefcase.  When the line marches on, the protagonist steals the briefcase and decides to steal the professor's identity as well.  His goal: weave himself into his new life without getting caught.

Motivation: The prisoner's goal is survival.  We can only assume that his replacement, the professor, and the other 199 men in that line are dead.  Should he be revealed as a fraud, death will be his final sentence too.

Conflict: Using the generosity of the professor's friends and a post-office box, the prisoner lives in safety for a year.  He deals with the guilt of knowing that his own escape directly caused the death of another man by telling himself that in living, he is living for both himself and the professor.  But his plan fails when the professor's widow seeks him out and exposes him as an impostor.

My favorite part of this story is that Makkai manages to pull "it" off without identifying her main character's name, the location, or the time in which "The Briefcase" takes place.  Even without those details, we are still drawn into the world and the protag's journey.  I don't know how Makkai pulled that off exactly, but she does.

"ReMem" by Amy Brill

I'm back to my blog after a month of nonstop editing on my manuscript and I'm happy to be here to share a great story with you.  I'm particularly excited about this week's author because I got to hear the lovely Ms. Brill speak about her latest novel, The Movement of Stars, at the recent Boston Book Festival.  Full disclosure, I haven't read the book (yet) but it's about a 19th century lady astronomer on Nantucket.  I'm going to read it back to back with Liz Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, which is, of course, about  a 19th century lady botanist.  I will get so in touch with my dormant lady scientist that I might just be able to perform some amazing feat like changing a light bulb.

One last fascinating tidbit about Amy Brill: her Twitter page says that she had a baby in a car, so she's clearly some sort of superhero, considering the fact that I could barely have a baby in a hospital.

On to the story...

"ReMem" was published in this month's One Story, otherwise known as the lit journal you can fit into your pant's pocket.  And long story short (pun intended), I loved it.  It's this really cool sci-fi-ish, futuristic, dystopian....family saga?  YEAH IT IS.  You've all read George Saunders Tenth of December by now right?  Assuming you have, because you must, imagine Saunders with a bit less self-awareness and a smidge more emotional connection to his characters (no judgment--- I clearly adored his book, like he cares anyway).

"ReMem" tells the story of Alfred and his daughter Lauria, and his dead wife Elleni is in there too, because Alfred and Lauria live in a world where all of their memories are recorded and can be accessed at any time through various fancy technological interfaces.  The only problem is that Alfred's been getting these nasty headaches...oh and one other problem: humanity is contemplating the possibility of going body-less.  Just upload your memories to the server and you can be released from that pesky physical existence of yours.

A sign of a great short story is that it satisfies while also leaving you wanting more.  ReMem fits the bill.

"Milk" by Ron Carlson

I need to ramble a bit today.  May I?  Yes, it's your blog and it's a blog.  Ramble.

I love short stories and I love the idea of the people that write them.  Even if they are evil or otherwise unfit as humans, and they probably aren't but even if they are, I think if you write short stories you get a free pass.  When I thought Alice Munro was actually on Twitter last night I was so excited, and then felt sort of sad and shamed when it wasn't her.

One of the reasons I love short stories is because you can be in a bad mood, then you read a short story, and it makes everything just a little bit better.  It shifts your perspective just enough to make you realize that, like the story itself, your mood won't last forever.  Your mood, you realize, is a short story.  I'm generally a happy person but yesterday, well yesterday I didn't want to read a short story but I needed to, and I picked a great one: Ron Carlson's "Milk."

Do you know his work?  I didn't but I'm a fan now.  Not only did I enjoy his writing but he's got a great head of hair and I'm a sucker for any guy that can rock a jean jacket.  I think he would be fun to take to a dive bar on the Jersey Shore.  We could play pool and drink beer and talk about the writing life.  Ron, if you're reading, call me.

Back to "Milk." As you know I'm always looking for lessons in the short stories I blog about and there's a doozy in this one.  If you've been struggling with the issue of scale, read this story, the story of a father named Jim.  Here's the grand theme: being a parent is terrifying.  How does Carlson approach his theme?  By zeroing in on the story of one father.

There are the twins, and their generic adorability that cloaks their true purpose in life: to create a sense of fear in their dad that is so profound that it makes even milk cartons seem ominous.  I try not to let myself think of the unique pseudo-death that I would experience if anyone took my child, but that terror creeps in at times.  It hits me when bad things happen in the world, but yes, it also catches me unexpectedly, not in the moments of sadness but in the moments of joy.  What if I ever lost those moments?

I appreciated that Carlson told this story from a father's point of view, because in my experience worrying is often seen as the purview of women.  It made me look twice at his fears and see them more clearly.  If you are interested in stories about parenthood, if you want to study the use of scale, or if you are in a wicked mood, read "Milk."

"Pilgrims" by Elizabeth Gilbert

Yes, that Elizabeth Gilbert, of the Eat, Pray, Love fame and the recent new release of a novel, The Signature of All Things, which is getting great reviews, that Elizabeth Gilbert has a sordid past as an acclaimed short story writer.  Oh how I loved the recent Times story that glimpses the young Gilbert, hawking her fictional wares in the big city, refusing to accept no for an answer.  Then this---"Pilgrims," gets published in Esquire when Gilbert is just a wee lass.  

For the writers in my readers, the lesson Gilbert has to share is to Go There, Go Everywhere, Go at Once, but Go.  You won't write dialogue like that spoken between Martha and Buck, the two horse-wrangling main characters, if you don't Go and Listen to the voices of the lost seekers.  Or you will, because there are no rules, and if you follow the first lesson Gilbert taught us, the one in persistence, then you can live under a rock and still write pitch-perfect dialogue, because that's your way to get there and that's another rule: the only way there is the one you take.

The victory of "Pilgims" is the life infused in Martha and Buck through their own words.  What talent it took for Gilbert to stand back and let them speak their drunken memories and falsehoods, as if she's not really there at all.  The best writing is invisible, of course, and this is a perfect example of that.

The gift that I'll carry with me in my writing bag of tricks is how specificity breeds generality.  You don't get to grand themes by writing grand themes (unless you do, and that's your rule) but rather by zeroing in on two humans next to a campfire.  If you can capture those two humans then this magical thing happens: they become any two young people who are seeking a thing they don't know and can't name, who decide that riding bareback in a dark meadow is as good an answer as any.

"Gazebo" by Raymond Carver

My urge is to copy and paste the story here, because nothing I can say about it can do it justice, and because it's so....I haven't eaten meat since I was twelve years old, but I imagine that when you take a bite of a perfectly cooked hamburger, fresh off the grill, it's something like my experience reading "Gazebo."

There is, of course, the opening:

That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off.  That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.

There are these people trying to end something, Duane and Holly, trying to end it but they can't end it.  This way of honoring that our bad choices are runaway trains, as unavoidable as gravity....it's beautiful.

I'd open my eyes and look at the ceiling and listen to it ring and wonder what was happening to us.

But maybe I should be looking at the floor.  

I'll never forget that line.  This isn't a story; it's a tattoo.

My writer friend Kathy and I have been emailing back and forth about short stories, talking about this idea of whether something "happens" or not.  And I think a lot of readers are looking for that moment in the stories they read.  I think they want the stoning scene in The Lottery, if I'm being honest.  Great story, but in some ways that scene is the least interesting part of it.  Just sayin'.

And that's not Carver.  He doesn't zoom back and spoon feed you a climax.  He puts a target on the backs of two or three people and lets you witness the hunt.

I get down on my knees and start to beg.  But I am thinking of Juanita.  This is awful.  I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

Do you clap or cry after a line like that?  Maybe both.

So okay, it's happened.  I'm a Carver fan.  What should I read next?

"Karma" by Rishi Reddi

This week I read, "Karma," which was recently selected for One City, One Story in Boston.  Copies of the story are being made available all over the city and you can also access it for free online HERE.  And for my New England friends who weren't already planning to attend the Boston Book Festival, consider this blog post your sign from the universe.  Rishi Reddi will be on hand to give a talk about her story, along with lots of other yummy, juicy author types.  Let's show Boston and Copley Square some love.

"Karma" is the story of Shankar Balareddy.  I like Shankar.  I do.  He saves the dead birds that are landing on the streets of Boston, confused by the lure of city lights at night.  He cooks his wife a nice dinner.  And though I was left feeling like I wished Shankar could treat himself with the same persistence and care as his beloved birds, Reddi has certainly crafted a wholly believable character, the kind of person that can't get out of his own way.  There is a Shankar in all of us.

Shankar has some help in staying downtrodden though, in the form of his successful brother, Dr. Prakash Balareddy.  Prakash is....Prakash is.....Prakash is an asshole.  There's just no other way to say it.  He kicks his brother and his sister-in-law out onto the street.  He hangs out with a real hoity-toity crowd.  He's entirely unlikeable.  Except that he's not.  I empathized with Prakash and I'm curious if other readers felt the same.  We all like Shankar.  We all want to point him in the right direction, away from the deceptive lights that cause him to smack against metaphorical skyscrapers.  But because of the honesty in Reddi's story, we also have to admit to ourselves that if Shankar was our brother, we'd have probably tossed him out too.  "Shankar!" we'd yell.  "Get it together!"  Watching Shankar circle the drain of victimhood would be, well, draining.  Because there's a little bit of Prakash in us too.

Boston is a minor character in the story so if you love the city you'll love this read.  And anyone who has any sibling issues will surely connect too.