Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (Grace Paley)

Genre: Short stories
Year Published: 1974

Having been raised by a boomer mother, I can safely say that the events of the "long Sixties" (1958 to 1974) informed just about every aspect of my upbringing. My mom was, as we'd say now, old school: she marched on the Pentagon, wore white lipstick, and broke the glass ceiling in her department at her public university. She bought me The Beatles: 1967-1970 for my eleventh birthday and deconstructed the gendered messages in Cinderella. So the long Sixties is an era that I feel I understand, at least as much as one can who did not live through it.

Yet within that little dependent clause lies my difficulty with Enormous Changes: I did not live through that era, and in much the same way that I need to read an annotated version of Shakespeare because of his period inflections and references, there is so much that Grace Paley writes on that I have no hope of understanding without help. Her work in this book is imbued with a huge sense of time and place -- New York City during the "cultural revolution" -- which certainly is in her favor as far as realism and weight go, but a young reader like me has next to no chance of grasping all her points.

Let me back up a moment and say that Grace Paley is one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. I've read Begin Again, the newest collection of her poetry, and though her style isn't really my thing, I can appreciate her brilliance. Similarly, while reading Enormous Changes, her writing abilities were never once in question. Take this tiny snippet from the story "Faith in a Tree":

Of course that is what Junior is upstate for: love that forced possession. At first his father laced him on his behind, cutting the exquisite design known to generations of daddies who labored at home before the rise of industrialism and group therapy. Then Mr. Finn remembered his childhood, that it was Adam's Fall not Junior that was responsible. Now the Finns never see a ten-speed Italian racer without family sighs for Junior, who is still not home as there were about 176 bikes he loved.

Her prose is sharp and lean and often hilarious or upsetting, or sometimes both at the same time. I can't off the top of my head think of another writer who has managed to squeeze so much into stories that are so short.

A little less than half of the stories contained herein concern Paley's most famous character, Faith Darwin, a woman who is featured in stories throughout Paley's career. I have to say that I enjoyed these stories least of all the stories in the collection. Out of all the stories in Enormous Changes, they rely most on the minutiae of life in the working-class areas of New York City during the long Sixties, and thus were the least accessible to me.

My favorites in the collection include "Wants," the title story, and "A Conversation with My Father," the first and last of which seem very autobiographical. Thinking about it as I write this, what I think I really want from Grace Paley is a memoir, which would give me both her astounding writing and a firm context for it all.

Recommended? If you're over forty, I say yes wholeheartedly. If you're younger, I say yes with some hesitation.

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing (Melissa Bank)

Genre: Short stories
Year Published: 1999

Once upon a time, back in the magical land of college, I had a writing class requirement to get out of the way, so I spoke to my friend, who was the student representative of the creative writing department (as well as a highly regarded poet in her home country of India, but that's another story for another time). I asked her, "Do you think I should enroll in a short-story class, or a poetry class?"

And that wise girl told me, "Poetry. Short-story classes are full of girls who write about sitting in cafés and smoking cigarettes while they discuss their failed relationships."

I took her advice, and I was privileged enough to study and write modern poetry under the auspices of a very accomplished poet. I believe that class changed my life.

But enough about me (at least for the time being). The relevant information in that story, as you've probably guessed, was her remark about the type of material that surfaces in short-story classes. And that, I'm afraid, is what I have to take Melissa Bank to task for.

The Girls' Guide is not poorly written. Some of Bank's turns of phrase and stylistic choices are very well done. Her characterizations are on the nose, and the stories never drag. But at the end of each story, the smoke clears and you realize all Bank has given you is yet another cigarette-filled tale of relationship woe, punctuated by pithy realizations and dry wit.

The protagonist of the book is Jane Rosenal, who is the narrator and main character of almost all of the stories (which can be read as a whole in this book or individually). Her life seems to be permeated by the drifting uncertainty of the quintessential young adult, but with none of the associated passion. Jane is not political; Jane is not ambitious; Jane doesn't seem to give a damn about anyone or anything that's not just under her nose. She is well-read but not cultured; she is blithely upper-class without acknowledging it; she is endlessly introspective without much to show for it. In short, Jane is exactly the sort of character (or author) that my friend was warning me about years ago when I had to decide which writing class to take. Her voice and perspective make The Girls' Guide interesting at first, repetitive in the middle, and irritating towards the end.

Melissa Bank is certainly not a hopeless writer. I think she has a unique voice and an understanding of humor that's rare. But I think she needs to do a few things: one, to branch out to stories that aren't so similarly themed; and two, to ease up on her reliance on Weighty Realizations that no one ever has. (For example: "It occurred to me that if I really had grown up I wouldn't want to be told" and "I realize we sound like strangers who happen to be staying at the same hotel.") My aforementioned poetry professor was fond of forcing people to write poems about love without using words like "love" or "heart" or "soul"; I think if Bank could learn to write stories of people realizing things about themselves without constantly, explicitly referencing their realizations, she'd be on the road to better writing.

Recommended? Not so much. If someone recommends a certain story within the book, ask to borrow their copy just to read that one story. Taken individually, you might be able to get more out of them.

Beware of God (Shalom Auslander)

Genre: Short stories
Year Published: 2005

Have you ever read the Old Testament and thought to yourself, "Goodness, that God character is one homicidal, psychotic jerk"? Then this is the book for you.

In a passage typical of the book, a man who's being "stalked" by God is consulting his therapist for assistance.

Most stalkers, explained Dr. Herschberg, are lonely, isolated members of society, seeking intimacy or friendship. The stalking is simply a partial satisfaction of their voyeuristic, sadistic tendencies.

"That sounds like Him."

"You need to stop responding," said Dr. Herschberg.

"That's what my wife said," replied Schwartzman. "He's not easy to ignore."

"Are you afraid he might become violent?"

"If history's any indication."

The whole book is filled with similar indictments of the Jewish God (Auslander was raised Orthodox, and all his characters are Jews, some religious, some otherwise), executed with brilliant black humor. In pieces where God is actually present, He is universally depicted as a world-weary, out-of-touch braggart with little mercy and no answers.

You might think this would make for a terribly depressing read, and for the most part, you'd be correct. Interestingly, though, the truly difficult stories in the book are the ones in which God is not a character. There are a few allegories, which are obvious almost at the level of political cartoons with labels, but they manage to work anyway: two hampsters, one who believes their owner will return, the other a doubter, debate; the characters of Peanuts divide themselves into inventive religious factions; a man makes a golem and realizes he has no idea how to treat his autonomous creation.

However, the story that is saddest and perhaps most telling of Auslander's obvious distaste for certain aspects, at least, of religious Jewish culture is entitled "Holocaust Tips for Kids." It is long -- for Auslander, at least, whose stories tend to fall short of the 20-page mark -- and written in the unmistakable voice of a child. The child in question, never named, is a young boy, perhaps nine or so, who has been taught things about the Holocaust and religion that (the reader begins to think) should have been saved for later years.

Kevin calls my yarmulke a beanie. I am Beanie Boy.

If Kevin becomes a Nazi, the first place he'll tell the SS to look for me and Deena is in his attic. But we'll be in Florida.

Anne Frank was murdered in Bergen-Belsen after someone reported the family to the Nazis, so really -- don't tell anyone where you are going.

They're not really showers.

They'll probably make New York City into a ghetto, like the Warsaw Ghetto. If you live in a big city where there are Jews and one day there's a Holocaust, you should leave right away.

This line of thinking is, unfortunately, pretty familiar to any Jewish kid exposed to the facts of the Holocaust at an early age. But what differentiates this story from the typical Jewish kid's musing on that subject are the voices of his mother and rabbi, who tell him, respectively, "[Kevin's] mother is a no-good anti-Semite" and "the Holocaust happened because the Jews assimilated" (among other things). Beyond the terror of imagining that the Holocaust could happen in modern-day America, the child is made to doubt and fear the non-Jews around him, and to believe that his religion is less about joy and faith, and more about guilt and punishment. Auslander skewers this attitude, not only in this story, but throughout the collection.

Recommended? This might be a for-Jews-only read. Hey, Christians can have Left Behind; we can have our own unique brand of dark satire.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (Susanna Clarke)

Genre: Short stories
Year Published: 2006

If you haven't read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, dear readers, I tell you now in no uncertain terms: go find it. Pick it up secondhand, find it at a library, I don't care. Find it and read it.

All done? (I imagine you've been gone for several weeks, dear reader; the book does loom on 800 pages. How are you? How's the family been? Good? Good.) Now we can talk about The Ladies of Grace Adieu.

As you now know, England is a magical place, and fairies are capricious beasts who meddle in human affairs without compunction. This collection of seven short stories illuminates seven different occasions upon which the world of humans and the world of fairies clashed, and with what results. (The author seems to be quite biased towards humans, thankfully.)

(Even as I'm composing this review, I'm cognizant of how Clarke's impeccable British faux-eighteenth-century diction has crept into my writing patterns, leaving me to get my point across with big words and complicated grammatical structures. But no matter: if need be, I will sacrifice my newfangled prose in service of praising her.)

The Ladies of Grace Adieu is not flawless; I didn't even enjoy all the stories. The title story was all right, but I thought it was too oblique to hold the opening slot, and it was disappointing to see Jonathan Strange himself given such a bit part. I was not particularly fond of "On Lickerish Hill," the second offering, which cast back in time before the Jonathan Strange era, so the reader must parse words like "alwaies" and "owd" ("always" and "old," for those not well-versed in Elizabethan English). That would be forgivable were the story not an utterly predictable retread of "Rumpelstiltskin," and not the most amusing one, at that.

But the collection picks up nicely in the middle. We get work that's more original: though "Mrs Mabb" hearkens back to the second (less dark) half of "Tam Lin," it's different enough that it works on Clarke's terms. "The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse" is an absolute delight, and "Mr Simonelli or the Fairy Widower" (the longest of them all) is fun, since we experience a realization that there are fairies, and that they are mostly malevolent, through the eyes of an entirely average clergyman. "Tom Brightwind or How the Fairy Bridge Was Built at Thorseby" finishes off the middle section with a bang: it is the only time in the volume we see fairies and humans at anything approaching equal footing, and the magic that Tom Brightwind utilizes is very funny to watch in action.

The book peters out a little disappointingly: there is a short tale about Mary Queen of Scots that doesn't amount to much, and it ends with "John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner," which, as it's about the Raven King, is certainly interesting, but it's supposed to be a fairy tale (in the usual sense), and as such is a little too simplistic (though it is funny).

If there's anything that really made me sad about the collection, it's that we are not given even a hint of resolution on the issues that were left unsettled at the end of Jonathan Strange. I have no desire to spoil anything for those who haven't lived between those covers yet, but suffice it to say that the uncertain circumstances at that novel's end are made no less uncertain by this book. We can only hope she writes more on that subject in the future.

I will say this: Grace Adieu desperately made me want to reread Jonathan Strange. So that's what I'm doing now, though I imagine I'll have to intersperse other books if I want to keep up any sort of regular schedule on this blog. One of the bluestocking's superpowers is being able to read many books at once, though, so I'll be fine.

Recommended? Only as a follow-up to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell; if you've read that one, then make this your next read!

The Toughest Indian in the World (Sherman Alexie)

Genre: Short stories
Year Published: 2000

I like to think of myself as a savvy shopper. I found The Toughest Indian in the World at a secondhand shop and recognized Sherman Alexie as a much-lauded poet, so I threw it into my pile of books to purchase. (My local secondhand shop is the best in Pennsylvania, so I will often come out with an armload of books and a gap in my wallet where a $20 bill used to be. When books are a buck apiece, I'm not that picky about exactly what I'm getting.) When I got home, I realized it wasn't poetry. But Alexie's opening paragraphs grabbed me, so I kept reading, assuming it was a novel.

Well, I got to the end of the first story and realized it wasn't a novel either. But it was an excellent story, so I kept reading, and I'm glad I did.

I happen to live in one of the five states in the country with the smallest percentage of the American Indian population, so I have absolutely no personal experience with Indians. That being the case, this book was, besides being entertaining, educational for me. All of Alexie's stories center around being Indian (that's his nomenclature, and I refuse to P.C.-ify the man's work) in modern-day America. Most, though not all, of his stories involve sex, and they're all about love, in their own peculiar ways. They're also about the difficulties that Indians face -- racism, interracial relationships, assimilation, enormously high death rates for Indian teens, the encroachment of Christianity, disproportionate rates of alcoholism and diabetes -- but now that I've written that whole list out, I'm afraid I've made it sound like an "issues" book that sacrifices plot for message. That's not at all the case. Alexie sketches great characters and great dialogue for those characters, and these stories are first and foremost about the characters. Indian issues are simply the backdrop for the prose.

The centerpiece of the book is a story, the longest of the bunch, called "The Sin Eaters." It is the only story in the pack that ventures past realism into a sort of sci-fi surrealism, but it is probably my favorite of the collection. As far as I'm concerned, the story is the answer to the question, "What would be the modern-day equivalent of the Trail of Tears?" (It's not a happy story, as you may have guessed.)

The other stories are much more concerned with the everyday -- especially the last, "One Good Man," the most touching one in the collection, written in the first person by a middle-aged Indian man whose father's feet are amputated because of diabetes complications. It's the only story in the bunch that reads as though it could be autobiographical -- though it's not the only one in first person -- and it's a fitting way to end the book, with this possible peek, perhaps false, into Alexie's own life.

Recommended? Yes.

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders (Neil Gaiman)

Genre: Short stories (with the occasional poem)
Year Published: 2006

Congratulations to the inimitable Neil Gaiman for being the first male author here at The Bluestocking's Blog. I do want to bring the spotlight to women as much as possible, but I couldn't pass up Gaiman's new book, Fragile Things. I let myself read it as an antidote, if you will, to Possession. (Not that I didn't like Possession immensely . . . but after 555 pages of thick prose and Victorian-style poetry, some clear-headed short stories feel like an oasis.) So as you read this review, keep in mind that I'm a Gaiman addict (I've even seen him in person and waited for ages to get him to sign books).

In my mind, there are two kinds of short stories: satisfying short stories, and New Yorker short stories. Deep down, I know this is an oversimplification of the matter, but stay with me: the stories that are published in places like the New Yorker are always character studies about ennui and/or divorce and/or seedy sex. (My favorite example of this is a Murakami story in which a man spends a year eating noodles and not returning his ex-roommate's ex-girlfriend's phone calls -- I acknowledge the man's genius, but good gravy.) You feel sort of empty at the end, and like you didn't really want this window into these poor people's lives.

Gaiman's short stories, on the other hand, fall into the "satisfying" camp, though perhaps not for the most obvious of reasons. Each story incorporates some element of the fantastical, though I don't think you could label any of them as a "ghost story" or "zombie story" or the like. They are, first and foremost, real works of literary merit. If the main character happens to be the archetypal Harlequin, or if the setting is Hell, well . . . the point is believing in the story, not believing the story is comprised of facts.

The stories are not satisfying because they end happily (quite the contrary, in fact); they are satisfying because Gaiman always provides a real narrative with tricky questions that are at least partially answered by story's end. He does not deliberately deceive his readers, though he may play with misdirection from time to time. His two objectives seem to be 1) to make your skin crawl and 2) to give you a beginning, middle, and end that do not leave you feeling cheated.

As for the negatives, well . . . to be honest, I'm not much of a horror fan, and many of his stories stray strongly in that direction. My favorite tales in this collection are the ones that are eerie, but not so gory: "A Study in Emerald" (a Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu Mythos crossover, believe it or not), "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire" (a Gothic satire), "The Problem of Susan" (a peek into Susan of Narnia's future), and "Goliath" (a story in the Matrix universe). There are others that, while I appreciate their brilliance as stories, I simply can't declare any affection for (the one about the witch who devours live animals and people bit by bit, the one about the boys who disappear into a shed and are never seen again, etc.)

There is also some poetry in here, but it's not really worth mentioning. It's entertaining enough, but it's not . . . poetry. It's prose with line breaks.

In short, Gaiman is a magnificent writer, but this should not be the first thing of his that you read. He seems to exorcise his demons via short story; for lighter fare, try Anansi Boys; for more profound, try the Sandman collection; for something approximating regular old literature, try American Gods. Attempt this collection only after trying -- and liking -- one or more of the above.

(Sidenote for those who've already read American Gods: the cap on this collection is a novella set two years after it ends. "The Monarch of the Glen," as it is titled, was nice inasmuch as it let us get a little more time with Shadow, but I didn't love it. Maybe a better background in Norse mythology would have helped me out, but while Gaiman usually stays just this side of the line between "mysterious" and "confounding," "The Monarch of the Glen" was . . . confounding, sadly. In a regular short story about a nameless narrator, I wouldn't have minded, but I want more exposition when I'm dealing with a character I'm quite attached to.)

Recommended? Yes, though I wouldn't necessarily spring for the hardback. Wait for it to come out in paperback; read a story or two in the store; see if you want to own it. Unless you're a Gaiman completist, like me, you may feel more than satisfied with taking it out of the library.