Now that the haiKU street poetry project is complete, the teaching qualification is ratified, and behind the fridge could not be cleaner I can no longer defer this blog project – as is my techno-retarded wont. I enjoy computers as much as I do overcooked liver so this may be a little scrappy for a while but I’m hoping to work it out, day by day.
threesixfivestory – A year devoted to short story writing, and reading, and some thinking if not absolute understanding.
The mission: to find one new story a day, read it and blog something about it.
A story may be 6 words or 60 pages – there are no limits beyond the vagaries which define short story writing itself.
Let’s see what kind of narrative web spins over the next four seasons, where the journey will lead us and what connections may entwine themselves along the imagined road.
It would be very pleasing to have some company along the way.
laters,
Stuart
day 213 – the good lion, ernest hemingway
the good lion, ernest hemingway pp3 (1951)
the collected stories
london: everyman library 1995
‘Once upon a time there was a lion who lived in Africa with all the other lions.’
I’ll be frank. I’m thrown. Hemingway, the belligerent boozy old bastard writes a children’s story? A gentle warming fairytale?
That can’t be right, can it?
‘ “Look at him with wings on his back,”‘
It’s all so nice.
‘ “Look at what he eats,” they would say because the good lion only ate pasta and scampi because he was so good.’
It’s a kind of ‘good will out’ type story, isn’t it?
‘But the good lion would sit and fold his wings and ask politely if he might have a Negroni or an Americano’
But, as yet, I really cannot tell if this is real – that is, real as in really a fairytale, or is it some twisted dark allegory at work.
‘One day he refused to eat eight Masai cattle and only ate some tagliatelle and drank a glass of pomodoro.’
Certainly, it is not as simple as it first appears. Surely.
But what is the tone here?
Maybe, not an allegory but a parable?
‘She growled at him and they all roared with laughter.’
The Prodigal Son crossed with The Ugly Duckling.
‘ “Adios,” he said. for he spoke beautiful Spanish, being a lion of culture.’
‘The Basilica looked more beautiful than a soap bubble.’
‘The good lion looked about him at the faces of all the nice people and he knew that he was home but that he had also traveled.’
Undeniably, home is better for having traveled. But equally, traveling is better for having a home to which to return.
day 211 – drinking coffee elsewhere, zz packer
drinking coffee elsewhere, zz packer pp27
drinking coffee elsewhere
new york: riverhead books, 2003
‘Her hair was a shade of blond I’d only seen on Playboy covers,’
‘She always said she was fat… large black women wore their fat like mink coats.’
A story of identity of one who does not know with whom to connect, or how.
‘One of her hands curved atop the other to form a pink, freckled molehill on her desk.’
afraid of everyone. isolated. cold. self-reliant.
‘Suddenly I was hard-bitten and recalcitrant, the kind of kid who took pleasure in sticking pins into cats;’
where the longing is for belonging. and there ‘s a need to be in, before you can come out.
‘Heidi was round and soft and had a moonlike face… And lesbians had cats. “Do you have a cat?” I asked.’
a lovebite. honest passionate expressive of a secret vital self, one of which your parents might not necessarily approve, or at least, want to see.
sharp. raw. biting. bruise-like. an uncensored reminder.
‘ “The human penis is one of the most germ-ridden objects there is.” Heidi looked at me unconvinced.’
the dare in a lair.
‘ ” Sleep with him? Then when he makes fun of you, what? Come pound your head on my door reciting the poems of Sylvia Plath?” ‘
like seeing your reflection. in a mirror. on a ceiling. not knowing what to feel.
‘ “Soft packs remind me of you,” she said. “Just when you think you’ve smoked them all and you think there’s none left, there’s always one more, hiding in that little crushed corner.” ‘
a caffeine hit. darkly sweet. eye-widening. thrilling. affirming. warmly relaxing. pert. alert. bombastic. funk. paring. daring. spank.
‘ ” What are you going to do when you’re finished?” Heidi asked. Sexy question marks of smoke drifted up to the windows before vanishing.’
‘ I remembered the morning of my mother’s funeral. I’d been given milk to settle my stomach; I’d pretended it was coffee. I imagined I was drinking coffee elsewhere.’
Taking something that was intended to be childishly reassuring, warm, comforting and turning it into something adult, something dark and bitter? How readily do we guzzle pub-psychoanalysis?
drinking clinking chinking sinking stinking blinking thinking
coffee frothy sweetly softly dark like toffee
elsewhere is anywhere where not here begins and nowhere is not somewhere that can yet be seen
these ‘Orientation games’:
1. select your game
2. choose a side
3. play
Now, d’ya wanna come in for coffee, or not?
day 210 – a comparison, sylvia plath
a comparison, sylvia plath pp3
johnny panic and the bible of dreams
london: faber and faber 1979
‘How I envy the novelist!
‘I imagine him, better say her,’
The poet envies the novelist her time and space.
The novelist envies the poet his brevity and speed.
‘She, it seems to me, has all the time in the world. She can take a century if she likes, a generation, a whole summer.
‘I can take about a minute.’
‘Everything is changed in a minute.’
‘How shall I describe it? – a door opens, a door shuts. In between you have had a glimpse:’
‘The door of a novel, like the door of a poem, also shuts.’
‘The poet becomes an expert packer of suitcases:’
Continually folding and unfolding. Often without moving on.
What two things can fairly be compared, for are not all things only themselves and no other single thing?
Lemons & oranges. Apples & pears.
day 208 – mr. jones, truman capote
mr. jones, truman capote pp3
music for chameleons
london: penguin 1993
‘It was not a shabby place, but a pleasantly furnished, elderly brownstone kept hospital-neat by its owners, two maiden sisters.’
Unsurprisingly for Capote, his anecdotal story and the easy, conversational manner of storytelling make it impossible to infer whether it is embellished memoir or complete fiction.
The narrator, whom we may, or may not, presume is the author lives in a rented room next to the eponymous hero, who receives all manner of visitors and phonecalls to his room ‘often after midnight and as early as six in the morning.’ Our narrator, evidently not wanting to be a scandal-stirrer or cast aspersion on anyone’s character, is quick to make clear that his neighbour ‘was not a drug dealer or a fortuneteller’.
Capote sets his story in the winter of 1945 – that perhaps points to deciphering the enigma of Mr. Jones more than anything else in this story.
The brevity of this anecdote barely allows for description of place, setting, decor, or indeed very much at all. almost all of the attention is given to building up a picture of Mr. Jones.
‘There was no mistaking that lean, distinctive face, those high cheekbone with the single scarlet star-shaped birthmark.’
The story is set in 3 clear times: the first then – the winter of 1945; several months later; ten years after that. Interestingly, the first the first two scenes are told in the past tense.
‘I moved to Manhattan. Several months later I returned’
The third is recorded in the present.
‘Now it is a zero-cold December afternoon. I am riding in a subway car. There are only a few other passengers.’
What effect does this have on us, the collective reader?
Who keeps up with the Jones?
Indeed, who checks in to a hotel, motel or boarding house as Mr. Jones?
day 207 – the state of grace, harold brodkey
the state of grace, harold brodkey pp10 (1954)
the granta book of the american short story: volume one
london: granta 1992
(edited by richard ford)
‘There is a certain shade of red brick – a dark, almost melodious red, sombre and riddled with blue – that is my childhood in St Louis.’
Brodkey’s unnamed narrator takes us gently by the hand and walks us through his streets, and their cross-hatched scorings across the landscape of ohis childhood memories.
‘(and a tangible fear that made me feel a falling away inside, like the plunge into the unconsciousness when the anesthetic is given),’
There is a vertiginous feeling that pervades the voice throughout as if he, and we too, are poised precariously on the broken lip of something we should not dare fall into.
‘there was going to come a moment when, like an acrobat, I would have to climb on her shoulders and on the shoulders of all the things she had done for me, and leap out into a life she couldn’t imagine ( and which I am leading now),’
Normally, I would try to extract a punchy sentence, or a line or two, which captures some great poignancy of the story as a whole. But to isolate a line or two would not give a fair impression of what is really at work here.
‘that finally drove me away from any sensible judgment with life to the position that dreams had to come true or there was no point in living at all.If dreams came true then I would have my childhood in one form or another, someday.’
Brodkey builds carefully; line after line, clause upon clause, he leads us up an staircase, on which we can never quite see far ahead enough to know exactly where we’re going.
He writes passages so beautiful, melodic and taut with yearning that the words seem to tremble on their lines.
‘Edward’s would press his eyelids in spasms of ecstasy; his delirious, taut little boy’s body would fall backward on the soft pillows and bounce and his back would curve;the excited breathy laughter would pour out like so many leaves spilling into spring, or so many lilacs thrusting into bloom.’
When you’ve climbed a few of these staircases it begins to feel like you’re a figure caught in a drawing by M.C.Escher – always climbing yet somewhere unknowingly sinking lower.
‘He was a precocious ad delicate little boy, quivering with the malaise of being unloved.’
Arguably, what he creates is not a state of grace but a state of remorse.
‘the cold winds of insecurity hadn’t shredded the dreamy chrysalis of his childhood. He was still immersed in the dim, wet wonder of the folded wings that might open if someone loved him; he stil hoped, probably, in a butterfly’s unthinking way, for spring and warmth. How the wings ache, folded so, waiting; that is they ache until they atrophy.’
A remorse that aches as painfully as any heartbreak, coupled with the unforgiving burn of never having let himself love.
‘Mother, my teacher, my sister, girls at school, other boys – they all wanted me to love them.
‘But I wanted them to love me first…
‘If I had to love first I would love only perfection.’
As he walks us through his streets, Brodkey’s unnamed narrator takes us gently by the hand not, as we first thought, because we might need to feel more secure and not alone; but because he does.
day 206 – mr coffee and mr fixit, raymond carver
mr coffee and mr fixit, raymond carver pp4
what we talk about when we talk about love
london: vintage 2009
Carver at his most minimal. The briefest of the brief.
‘I’d say to my wife, “I think I’ll get a Smith and Wesson.” But I never did it’
A short story. Short short. With short sentences. Creating a shortness of attitude. In the tone. Cold even.
‘Melody didn’t like it any better than I did.’
This is deliberate. Of course. Though whose deliberation we cannot know. At least from this version. Carver or Lish.
‘His name was Ross and he had six kids. He walked with a limp from a gunshot wound his first wife gave him.’
My least favourite of Carver’s. I have to say. It feels mean where others feel rich. In so many ways.
‘She went out to the kitchen to do it while I waited until I heard running water.’
I’m not sure it mines the depths that others reach. Or strikes wonder.
‘It was a Friday noon and he was fifty-four.’
Nonetheless, there is an icy truth that colours the cold. It matches the polar blue of a broken heart.
‘ “Honey,” I said to Myrna the night she came home. “Let’s a hug a while and then you fix us a real nice supper.”
day 204 – and now to god the father, daphne du maurier
and now to god the father, daphne du maurier pp26
the doll
london: virago 2011
‘Most people had their own pews, and those who had not, generally found it very difficult to get a seat at all.’
‘The world is so full of glorious opportunities to-day… we have every chance to better ourselves, to improve our minds, to give the best in exchange for the best.’
‘Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify Thy Glorious Name, evermore praising Thee, ‘
‘The vicar nodded his approval – ‘
‘No, you have nothing to be frightened of.’
‘And now to God the Father…’
