From History to Short Fiction: Continuing on the T-Train

The past week I finished the Troy, Maine history and started on a collection of short stories edited by Amy Tan (another "T" author): Best American Short Stories of 1999.  I've read a couple of the stories so far and have been enjoying them.

I'll have more to say next week on this.

Seattle Revelations

This week I read the 10 stories that comprise Sherman Alexie's collection of stories, Ten Little Indians, published in 2003. They are all good and sad and funny, as Alexie's work is.  The stories are about 10 different American Indians, all living in Seattle.  They are different by occupation, age and class; some are of mixed race, some not.  But all are interesting, and each is exposed to the reader's view in a rather extreme way.

What the stories have in common is this openness, this stark honesty that reveals the characters' dark secrets, not only to the reader, but also to other characters, many of them total strangers to the protagonist.  In fact, it is this confessional aspect of each story that ties it to the next. It's almost as if the characters are acting as readers for each other.

Alexie always has a storyteller in his fiction; he sees the storyteller as central to his culture, even perhaps to all cultures.  As a storyteller himself, Alexie knows that for the storyteller to complete his mission, there must be a listener who is willing to enter the storyteller's world. In each of the stories in Ten Little Indians there is such a listener: kind, tolerant, responsive, insightful.  And I would add: grateful. Grateful for the story, for the chance to the see the world through a stranger's eyes.

It's been a few months since I've read Alexie's work (See my October 11, 2012 post), so it was nice to get back to his world, although I must say that Alexie's vision is not for the faint of heart. It's intense, but rich in its intensity.  A little Alexie goes a long way, but that little bit is immensely satisfying.  And the feeling lingers; after reading one of his stories, I think about it for hours and sometimes days.

The best story in the collection, in my opinion, is "What You Pawn, I Will Redeem." It's a story with a classic structure, comprising 24 hours in Jackson Jackson's life, starting when he sees his grandmother's dance regalia in the window of a pawn shop.  The pawn broker tells him that if he can raise the $1000 it cost, he will sell it to him. But he gives Jackson only 24 hours to raise the cash or the deal is off.  He even gives Jackson $20 to get him started on his quest.

And it is a quest, like that of Odysseus in a way--a long, winding journey that gets sidetracked many times because, you see, Jackson is a homeless alcoholic who tends to spend any money he comes into on alcohol.  He has many friends, though, including the local police officer, who accompany him at various points on his journey.  It seems likely that Jackson will not succeed, but as with many of Alexie's stories, miracles (of the earthly sort) have a way of happening.  The outcome is unexpected, and very satisfying.  I recommend this book highly.

My next book will be non-fiction, and in keeping with my alphabetical selection method (I'm still in the As), I'll be reading Beyond Knowing: Mysteries and Messages of Death and Life from a Forensic Pathologist, by Janis Amatuzio. It appears to be a memoir of Dr. Amatuzio's life and career as a pathologist, with the focus on mysteries of death, in particular spiritual mysteries. It looks interesting; I'll let you know what I think later.

Four Tales, Fairly Hopeful

All is not lost.  My second set of choices from The Best American Short Stories 1990 proved to be more uplifting, if not exactly cheery.  This time I decided to abandon the order altogether and go with writers I knew or knew of.  I started with one of my favorite writers, Alice Munro, probably the most famous of the group. 

Richard Ford included two of Munro's stories in this collection, but I've read only the first so far, "Differently," a story about two women's friendship. The protagonist, Georgia, is rather conventional until she meets Maya, a woman who is pretty wild, but interesting. Under Maya's influence, Georgia changes, not entirely for the worse.  It's one of those stories in which the events of the narrative are not in themselves earth-shattering but serve to point the way toward the main character's realization of some truth, an "accidental clarity" (214) as the narrator puts it.

Elizabeth Tallent's story, "Prowler," is also of that kind. This story is about a man's coming to terms with his ex-wife and his son's feelings about her.  I chose it because Ms. Tallent was once my teacher and I admire her work and her ideas about writing and fiction.  She didn't disappoint me. "Prowler" was a fast read and the most hopeful story I've read so far in this collection.

The other two stories also ended on a hopeful note, I think, if a bit more tentative.  "Finding Natasha," by Madison Smartt Bell (an author I'd heard of but not read), is the story of a recovering addict's search for his girlfriend who's also an addict. As he moves through his old haunts, revealing his past, we worry that he will fall back into his old ways. It's not clear if he learns anything along the way, though, so when he finally finds Natasha, we're not sure what will happen next.  It could go either way.

Much the same is Patricia Henley's story, "The Secret of Cartwheels," about Roxie, a 13-year-old girl whose mother has to go to a mental hospital for a few months, leaving her to cope with the painful upheaval her mother's sudden absence causes.  At the end, her feelings about her mother have changed, but we're not sure if it's a change for the better. Because Henley is the only writer of the four I hadn't heard of, I looked her up and found that the story is largely autobiographical.  It made me wonder whether the author eventually came to terms with her mother's illness.

As I was reading these stories I got to thinking about how different they are from stories that are "action-packed"--adventure stories, mystery stories, spy thrillers--that propel us toward a conclusion that puts everything right. Not realistic, perhaps, but satisfying nonetheless. Often people who like such stories don't like the more interior action of what's sometimes referred to as a "literary" story, the kind usually found in short fiction anthologies. They might see such stories as boring, incomprehensible, or just plain weird. And the reverse also tends to be true: many people who prefer literary stories won't read what to them is "pulp" fiction, shallow stories that don't engage the mind. Negative stereotypes attach to both sides of the divide, it seems.

But some of us, like me, read literary and non-literary stories, finding each type enjoyable in its own way. I draw the line, however, at stories that don't seem to have a plot or a point to make or that are just poorly written.  And there are plenty of stories out there like that, even (maybe especially) in literary anthologies.

As for these stories, I enjoyed all four. I'd like to check out other work by these writers sometime, especially their novels. You might want to give them a try as well.

All Those Sad, Sad Stories

Whenever I start reading one of the Best American Short Stories volumes, I always like to read the  guest editor's introduction, just to see how he or she managed to pick twenty stories from the 150 or so the series editor had passed along.  In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 1990, Richard Ford does not explain, exactly, how he chose his twenty.  He spends a great deal of time explaining his disdain for theorizing about short fiction, and then goes on to say that his twenty were the best stories because they were "excellent" or "wonderful" (xiv) or "interesting" (xix), which, he admits, doesn't really explain anything.  So from his introduction I didn't learn very much about the stories I was soon to read, except perhaps that Mr. Ford is a bit prickly, and that I don't really like him very much.  And it made me wonder if I would like his selection of stories.

But I went on to read them anyway, and as of this morning I've read three: Edward Allen's "River of Toys," Richard Bausch's "The Fireman's Wife," and Pam Houston's "How to Talk to a Hunter."  Of the three authors, the only one I've read before is Pam Houston.  I started out determined to read in alphabetical order, the way the stories are arranged, but after the sad Allen story and the depressing Bausch story, I thought I'd skip to someone I know.  A woman, perhaps, would have a more uplifting tale to tell.

But, alas, I was disappointed to find that Houston's story completed the trio of sad stories about failed or failing love affairs.  Richard Ford admits that there isn't much humor in his collection of interesting stories.  I will admit that all three of those I read are interesting.  "River of Toys" uses a river to tell a story about a young man's life; "The Fireman's Wife" has an unexpected ending; "How to Talk to a Hunter" reads like a list of instructions.  And all are well written.  But still depressing.

I wonder if it's the year that's the problem.  Was the sad, interesting story in vogue then?  Maybe.  Or maybe those who write short stories are sad, interesting people?  I guess I'm kind of old fashioned; I want a story that's a "good yarn," as people used to term it.  So far . . . not so much.

But I'm hopeful as I read on.  And I'll let you know what I find!