day 299 – taxi ride, helen hudson
taxi ride, helen hudson, pp5
the antioch review volume 67 no.4
the antioch review: usa 2009
‘ “Welcome, folks, ” he said, tipping his hat. ” To a new life experience.” ‘
A quite satisfying if rather odd story.
Odd? How so? you ask. Well, let me have a stab at explaining it.
Definitions are always one clear way of signposting an explanation.
‘Wesley looked up “corporeal” and “untoward” and eventualities” in his pocket dictionary.’
It’s the last ride of Mrs. Regina Rowland Moore, who evidently liked to think of herself as some kind of queen – and one gets the feeling that she probably devised her own moniker, much in the manner of Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearrances.
And this is the real twist of hte story I suppose that it is supposed to be the Regina’s funeral but really it develops into something of a sitcom. Or farce.
‘she thinks, and wonders why the whites always put crinkles in their hair while blacks pay good money to get them out.’
Nobody wants to be there, with perhaps the exception of Wesley the cab driver. And that’s only because he’s on the meter. And so what Regina would have wished, and perhaps even deludely expected, is a far cry from what comes to be.
‘She was turning pink to her ear lobes, Wesley noticed. A constant problem for people with so-called “white skin.” ‘
Beer bottles, banana skins and greasy McDonald’s bags. Hardly a discerning choice of final resting place.
So this grave scenario ( sorry! is undermined by a dark farcical comedy. But what also makes it odd is the continually random switches in point of view. This floating or limited omniscient POV.
Bonita seems ot be the central character, but at any moment we might just fly into the the thoughts and perspective of any of the four in the car. This is slightly unsettling. What, for me, goes well beyond that to the jarring and disruptive is when Bonita receives the call from Evergreen Memorial Home:
‘She was sampling Mrs. Moore’s Old Testament “we have a little sister and she hath no breasts…” when the phone rang.’
So far so good, bizarre perhaps, funny but fine. We are with Bonita as she answers the phone ands begins a conversation witih Mr. Evergreen. Then, out of nowhere: ‘Mr. Evergreen took a drink from the flask in his bottom desk drawer.’ Suddenly we’ve transferred down the phone line to his point of view. hmm? It’s not working for me. Unnecessarily destabilising the ship.
But, Hey-Ho, and a bottle of rum, as they say.
Otherwise I doon’t mind it. Doesn’t light my fire, but given the context that might be for the best.
‘ “Take it easy, lady,” Wesley says… “This here is a funeral, not a fire.” ‘
‘The last time he had been too young to apologize. This time it was too late.’
the miracle of mrs. evelyn howard, russell helms pp6
versal 9
‘Across the aisle, Mrs. Evelyn Howard glanced at her two young girls, who should have been three young girls,’
wowser. an incredible story of intrigue, drama, tension and insatiable disgust.
‘Hoover, a town very much like sliced chesse’
a writer in complete control of his subject, who does not need to withhold the shocking crux of this story for a big wham at the end.
‘It was nurse’s aide Debbie Dee, a matching set of small cold sores in the corners of her mouth, who found Evelyn, rails down, long body turned sideways like a slice of cantaloupe.’
instead, he uncovers more than enough of its vileness early on, and though we almost cannot bear to disocver the full despicable details we absolutely cannot look away.
‘At the sound of a paper hitting the sidewalk at an angle sufficient to create three tumbling arcs and then a loud swish of three-millimetre plastic plowing through the very, very bright green grass, Joyce covered his eyes and looked into the mirror by the door.’
fine, sharp,brave and lucid writing. perfectly poised on a filthy knife edge.
‘Debbie Dee noticed that the toilet seemed to be coughing. The light was on and what she saw made the back of her throat tickle.’
clear and exact imagery. a poetic skill for language. a measured hand of dramatic tension. brilliant and edgy. bravo.
‘ “Once a man, twice a baby,” the old man replied touching his sideburns.’
day 295 – move, alix nathan
move, alix nathan pp5
ambit volume 206
‘ “‘I love that we’re poles apart,” she said. “Magnetic pull.” ‘
You know, technically this is really pretty competent stuff. It’s not going to blow your mind or gast your flabber; but there is very little wrong with it. But for me, there is a little something lacking – I’ll come back to that.
Often with new emerging writers, and especially with novice writers, there can be a tendency to overstretch oneself, to rush in for the most complexrule breaking genre-defying life-changingpiece of writing. Nathan has chosen not to. And that can be commended.
As an aside, we can expect to encounter a whoe bunch of new and emerging writers, as well as the more renowned, as over the next month or two I turn my focus toward magazines, journals and online publishing – your suggestions as always would be inspirationally welcomed.
Time moves forward in a clear manner. Characterization is present, and quite rounded, if possibly, rather stereotypical.
‘She had class, left-wing credentials, a flat in Fulham.’
‘His origins were humble, but cool determination, order, brain-power had taken him far; would take him further.’
The basics of tenses, paragraph-building, scene-shaping,overall structure, narrative progression have all been well planned, competently executed and neatly polished.
Selina follows Barney when he decided to ‘move’ back to the States. The story plots their relationship from the early passionate ‘moves’ to the later days when they seem to be ‘moving’ apart. Then comes the Bomb, planted by MOVE – a grouo of ‘anarchists, dredlocked family surnamed Africa who wanteed to get back to nature and hated technology.’
Eventually, Selina ‘moves’ out. which is not a problem. In fact the slow process of becoming bored of getting on each other’s nerves seems to have happened a whole lot bloody quicker forhtis reader than it did for the characters themselves, so that actaully you wonder why the hell she didn’t do it earlier instead of going on about old women crying tears for Brahms down their unnaturally orange skin. Or seemingly irrelevant trips on the subway.
The truth is that when it becoms apparent that Selina and Barney must split up – ooh, like from the gradually dawning realisation that nothing else is going to happen – what you really want is for it to be spectacularly apocalyptically horrendous.
And it would be more entertaining if it were. As it is, the unfortunate truth for me is that I didn’t really come to care for either Selina or Barney and so why would I care if they split up? Therefore, I need more.
Frankly I wouldn’t have cared if Selina had slipped in a dangerously wet Tube station and impaled herself on her upturned cello, or if during one more research trip to Jodrell bank Barney’s reciprocatory gravitational magnetic pull with the Earth had been illogically interrupted for a microsecond, causing massive centrifugal forces to catapult him an infinite distance across the ever-expanding cosmos.
Instead, explained to us as a coda / epilogue we are met with The Doppler Effect, but is the writer’s nudge and a wink of self-aware acknowledgement of the metaphor enough to make it work?
Competent but bland. I ended up agreeing with Selina, and desparingly asking myself What for?
‘she told him everything… he was not interested in her observations.’
Let’s finish with a joke -
The Dope-ler Effect: When stoned, ideas travelling towards you at great speeds can mistakenly appear to be closer to genius than they really are.
day 294 – nero, louise erdrich
nero, louise erdrich ppy
the new yorker may 7, 2012
‘Every animal had its use.’
A story offered in first person past tense. But moving acorss three time periods. First there is the framing device of the narrator ssetting the scene looking back. - Now the scalding tub for pigs is rusted… and somewhere in the field behind the closed shop the bones of Nero whitely petrify.’
Then there’s the time in which the main plot unfolds.- ‘His howling was a liquid gargle that mesmerized us’
And there’s the flashback to the story within the story. – ‘In any case it was the other snake that dominated my thoughts the night that Uncle Jurgen fought Mr.Gamrod.’
A slow, purposeful rhythm pervades, evoking a sense of way-out where, sometime when. A place where time iitself is out of time. A place where globalisation and new world values have yet to arrive, but immigrants have stayed – and with them, an honest code by which things can almost always be resolved, whether its how you expected or not.
A place with no time for pathos.
‘He was probably called Mr. Johnson, like so many men in the Midwest.’
In the middle comes the story within the story – ‘The subject was dangerous exotic creatures.’
A tale of physicality, brawl and brute, dogged pursuit and perseverance and the honest authentic savagery of animal life – animals like us.
Of wit, of brain against brawn, of guarding what you know and the fear what you don’t. The opposing sides of ffence and defence.
And how every animal is designed for a purpose, possesses its particular weakness and strength.
‘He was raw energy with just one focus.’
And the flicker of near-death’s light can change an animal, for better or for worse.
‘The only way he could explain it was to say that he had been suspended in a timeless present that held the key to … something.’
day 293 – how to drown, keith ridgway
how to drown, keith ridgway, pp7
standard time
london: faber and faber 2001
‘The sound was a flapping thing, like a stumbling bird, of tiny ripples that caught the rocks and threw a gentle splash on the grass beyond.’
A good little story exemplarising a sharply focused close point of view, of a young boy playing with his sister by a lake after dark. A measured balance of dramatic tension and interior reflection.
A story that ends with a discovery of having learnt something of the world, and self – the connection between the two. As well as what is, and is not, possible.
Also highlighting what one chooses to say, and the connection, or not, with what one recognises to be true.
‘Put your hand in the water.’
‘Is it cold?’
‘Do you wash your hair ever?’
‘Do you hear a bell?’
‘I can’t see. It must near nine, do you think?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You look like a dog trying to lick himself.’
‘Mam will hear that,’
‘For what?’
‘Will you emigrate?’
‘Cornwall.’
‘You’re a fish out of water now.’
‘I think I will.’
Out of context it can seem absurd. In context it feels real and honest and faintly absurd.
‘His mother hugged him and told him that it was all right, he was fine and well and safe and fine’
‘That wasn’t what he was thinking at all.’
Tightly held, without ever trying to grip too hard.
Ridgway has no fear of changing up the length and pace of his sentences, demonstrating precise control over his prose, moving from short, curt drama-enhancing prose. With measured turns he quietly ratchets the tension. Then he eases his grip, to something longer, open, languid, meandering, fluidly-flowing serene and beguiling.
‘He knew how to drown.‘
