Aimee Bender, "Americca"

A family keeps discovering extra things around the house.

(from Tin House #40)

Not sure if there was something larger or overarching but I loved what this story did on the surface. This might be a ghost story, but who ever heard of a ghost that gave gifts? And usually, the gifts are just nice, innocuous gifts, unsettling because they appear out of thin air, but not intimidating on their own. It's like, thanks for the free soup, gifty ghost!
Read the story here.

E.O. Wilson, "Trailhead"

What happens to the colony when the queen dies.

(from The New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2010)

At first, there was no overt sign that her long life was ending: no fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed. Her stillness alone failed to give warning to her daughters that a catastrophe had occurred for all of them.

Even though this is a story about ant, and it seems to get into ant psychology, assigning motives and such, I can't help but think this would work as a piece of creative non-fiction. My assumption is that at the heart of this spectacular little epic (one almost entirely lacking when it comes to individual characters) is pure science based on hardcore entomology. (The secret life of insects is a fascinating topic, and one I tried to put onto paper myself once.) And I'm right, the author is an actual biologist and a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. That is a double threat.
You should read this story, so here.
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Ben Fountain, "Impasse Tempete"

An American man visits his mostly blind Haitian friend for what might well be the last time.

(from Ecotone Vol. 4, issues 1 and 2)

He’d lived in Port-au-Prince his whole life, and when I first knew him he liked to mock the Macoutes and their country ways, their bumbling attempts at urban cool. “Macoute guy, he dance like this,” Pierre would say, stomping and lurching around like a man trying to fling a crab off his foot. “But you born in Port-au-Prince, you from the city, you dance like this,” and now he’d ease into a fluid shuffle and glide that made you thankful for your eyes. But that was years ago, and now he never left his house except to see the doctor. One of his legs was always numb, and the high blood pressure often made him dizzy, and with his cataracts he felt lost on the streets.

“I can see far,” he told me, “I can see the mountains, but I can’t see your face. Your face just look all dusty to me.”

It's just an odd bit of coincidence that I happened to pick up this story to read now, when all of our minds are on Haiti. (Interesting also, that I've stumbled onto another story about somebody who can't see faces. Anyway.) The footage and the stories coming out of the small island nation following the devastating earthquake are unbelievable. Heartbreaking.
This story aims for a similar humane nerve. It's smart and swift, with many stones left unturned. Ben Fountain's signature move, I'd say, is to lead his readers to the blank places, the possibly unimportant omitted details, and allow them to make assumptions. "Impasse Tempete" is also a vivid picture of the difficult conditions that existed in Haiti long before the earthquake.
Read it here.

Aimee Bender, "Faces"

A mom suddenly discovers her son can't tell people apart. Or tell one person from a group.

(from The Paris Review 191)

On an unusual day during my childhood, my mother showed up at school and asked me questions about myself. I was twelve or so then, and generally I found my own way home: bus, walk, bike, hitchhike. I hardly recognized her car, waiting there by the flagpole with all the other mothercars until she honked and beckoned me inside.

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” I said at the window.

“Get in, William,” she said, pushing open the door. “How was school?”

“Why are you picking me up?”

“Get in,” she said, pushing the door open more.

I had, right then, a fast stab of fear in my stomach, like maybe she would kidnap me. Except for the fact that she had birthed me. It was confusing.

I guess what we've got here is one of those Oliver Sachs/The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat quirky cognitive situations. A funny, probably real disease. Bender handles the revealing gently, with lots of dialogue, not always plot-advancing. Which makes the whole thing funnier and more baffling. Read the first bit of it here.

Ian McEwan, "The Use of Poetry"

A guy studies Milton to impress a girl.

(from The New Yorker, Dec. 7, 2009)

Well, that's not really all it was about. This was really the story of Michael Beard's life, from the days his mom entered him in chubby baby contest to her deathbed confession to having had affairs to his university days wooing Maisie Farmer. Kind of a magic trick here: It was short and quickly paced, but because unimportant details were weighted pretty much that same as turning points in the characters' lives, it had a thorough, pondering quality. And no respect for the usual rules about chronological storytelling.
Read it here. I'm still making my way through this stack of New Yorkers.

Uwem Akpan, "Baptizing the Gun"

A priest meets a stranger in Lagos.

(from The New Yorker, Jan. 4, 2010)

Oh boy did that just happen? All that suspense, the nerve wracking, the political intrigue, the chaos, the traffic jams, the horrific images, the tight sentences — it all leads to a ridiculously simple twist. (In fact, I recall using a similarly lame turnabout in story I wrote in a high school.) But, okay, so there's a too-neat moralistic a-ha at the end. Fine. It's still worth reading.
Read it here.

Kurt Vonnegut, "The Nice Little People"

A man finds a knife that turns out to be a little spaceship containing a tiny crew.

(from Look at the Birdie)

Once, in a creative writing course back in college, the prof asked each of us to pick a story for a sort of unofficial dream anthology. A burgeoning Kurt Vonnegut completist, I chose "Thomas Edison's Shaggy Dog." Fine, said the professor, but it's not actually a well-written story. Back then I was like whatevs but now, with some time and mileage between the then me and the now, I get what he's saying. (To quote Craig Finn: "All your favorite books/ They wouldn't seem so well-written if you were just a little bit more well-read.") And it applies to this story too, and to a lot of KV's early sci-fi short pieces. The prose is so spare it borders on artless, and the surprise endings are telegraphed almost from page one. I'm still a a KV completist, so I'll keep reading — and there's plenty to enjoy within these pieces of previously unpublished Vonnegutiae — but Sirens of Titans this is not.

Ted Kosmatka, "N-Words"

After getting cloned back into existence, modern neanderthals suffer the familiar struggles of the different.

(from Seeds of Change)

They came from test tubes. They came pale as ghosts with eyes as blue-white as glacier ice. They came first out of Korea.

Kind of an awesome race-relations story. And, as per sci-fi tradition, the monster here was... man! High-concept, you might call it, but mostly driven by supple, vivid prose. (Listen to an audio version of the story here.) I haven't read anything quite like this before, but long after put the book down, I realized the idea wasn't a completely foreign one.

Those frakkin Geico Cavemen. Seems like most of my fellow humans now hate, or have always hated, those shelf-browed accidental pitchmen, who started out as mango-salsa eating metrosexuals and now seem to just be broken-spirited dudes who just want you to let them be themselves for awhile. I never saw the doomed TV show, no regrets there — it was likely the hideous result of a marketing hivemind straying from its natural habitat. Lame, I mean.

But I do actually feel bad for those guys. Everywhere they go, they are reminded of the prevailing myth that they are stupid, inferior, without equality in society. They can't even bowl without having their flat noses rubbed in the bigotry of their oppressors. ’Cause down comes that Geico-logoed pinsetter to put them in their place.
And the real twist of the knife is this: It's all a joke. These cavemen, who never asked to exist, show up just long enough to be shat on by their creator (who may or may not be a smug, colonialist gecko; at the very least, he's their overpaid golden boy peer). But what is clearly true psychic pain to them, is, inexplicably, a way to sell car insurance for some unseen but inescapable corporation. I don't mean to belittle those who, you know, actually currently exist and still struggle for equal treatment and rights, but I wonder if they don't see themselves in these downtrodden straw cavemen who were created only because mocking every other upright subset of the human experience has been taken off the table when it comes to acceptable derision.

When they came for the cavemen, we said nothing because we knew there was nobody else for them to come for.

Except aliens. And Big Foot. Possibly ghosts.

But after that, we could tell ourselves that, in polite conversation and publicly aired commercials, all sentient beings were guaranteed the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, allowed to be themselves for awhile.

Tess Gallagher, "King Death"

An old homeless guy starts hanging out in the neighborhood.

(from The Man from Kinvara)

Didn't enjoy this one. Not horrible, just limp. It was simplistic in its handling of of poverty and addiction, like an after-school special. And its sentences often ran one phrase too long; nothing worse than a story that wastes your time. I'm a reader, not an inpatient. I can do something else. I did muddle through to see if it ended in precisely the maudlin non-crescendo I expected. I was close.
To be fair, I probably wasn't going to be fair. There were a lot of things stacked up against this collection, which has been sitting on my bedroom floor since I snagged it from work a few months ago. 1) Look at that oil-painted cover. This thing looks like the boringest of all boring litmags — the kind even I wouldn't buy. 2) "Selected Stories" is almost always a hint that what lies within isn't fun. At best it'll be respected. 3) The back cover is full of blurbs written in black on charcoal. 4) That might actually be a good thing. This way I can't read whatever uninteresting thing Haruki Murikami has to say. Going in, the lone upside was the title. "King Death" coulda been so metal.

Wells Tower, "Raw Water"

An older couple moves to a nearly-deserted development around a bright red, man-made lake.

(from McSweeney's 32)

This was a different kind of story for Wells Tower, a sort of Stephen King meets Charles Bukowski deal, maybe. As strange as this is, the really really weird stuff will probably happen a hundred pages past the place "Raw Water" ends. But then we'd be looking at purer breed of genre fiction, a regular old horror story. I wouldn't have minded seeing how this whole mess ends, but I understand the author's desire to call it quits early. The conclusion is predetermined, even if it isn't written.
Tomorrow McSweeney's #33 comes out. I'm looking forward to their version of a newspaper.

Ander Monson, "Weep No More Over This Event"

A divorced man may or may not be losing his mind after he shoots an intruder in his home.

(from Tin House, Vol. 11, #1)

I found out later you can set the system, which is admittedly pretty glorious, to keep someone from leaving the house, too, though I did not read the entire instruction manual at the time and it would only seem important to me later, like most realizations I have had in my life.

The uncertainty comes not from whether the man is losing his grip on reality, but when it started. I like this narrator. He's unreliable (always a good thing) but also, for a while, totally sympathetic. And yet, there were little hints not to trust the guy. I don't wanna spoil it, but I'll say this: A+ for the gradual revelation of madness.
Read some of this story here. Learn more about Ander Monson here.

Kurt Vonnegut, "Confido"

A man invents a machine that tells you what you want to hear.

(from Look at the Birdie)

Actually, you don't always want to hear it. It can be kinda meanspirited to people you like. The name Confido is meant to invoke Fido, like a dog. But this is weirder than a pet. Spooky. As is the case with a lot of Vonnegut stories of a certain vintage, this one was funny and simple, a lark, a laugh.

Jill McCorkle, “Driving to the Moon”

Two old friends catch up after years.

(from Going Away Shoes)

Heartbreaking. The characters, the dialogue — mesmerizing. This story left me feeling drained and sad. I didn't want it to end. McCorkle discusses the story over at Largehearted Boy.

Rebecca Makkai, “The Briefcase”

A prisoner escapes his place in the chain gang only to watch another man get captured to take his place.

(from The Best American Short Stories 2009)

He thought how strange that a political prisoner, marched through town in a line, chained to the man behind and chained to the man ahead, should take comfort in the fact that this had all happened before. He thought of other chains of men on other islands of the Earth, and he thought how since there have been men there have been prisoners. He thought of mankind as a line of miserable monkeys chained at the wrist, dragging each other back into the ground.

Not sure what to say except I loved this simple, smart story. There's something wonderfully old-fashioned about this one. It's so good they put it in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2009, too. You should read it.

Jill McCorkle, “Me and Big Foot”

A woman kinda tired of being lonely but mostly tired of being pitied for being alone, invents a boyfriend.

(from Going Away Shoes)

There are no tire tracks leading in or footprints leading away. No license plate or inspection sticker. The front bumper is a two-by-four. A wet note penned on a coffee-stained napkin is under the wiper: You, cute looking owner of the little scrappy dog, please don’t tow or complain. I need you. Please. I’ll be back soon.

This one was brilliant, with a sort-of unreliable narrator but she lets you in on her scheme/craziness. Because we get all our info from her, we can't really trust that her ruse (a secret-super-stud boyfriend who's always out of town) is working, but that just makes this one more fun. Recommended. Read it here.

Kevin Killian, "Spurt"

A guy drives drunk home from a wake and ends up meeting strangers in a motel for sex.

(from Impossible Princess)

This was a real clunker. Amazing that a story with this much sex and danger and whatever was so uninteresting. Just really hamfisted. I need a break, Killian. Impossible Princess is a great name for a book, though.

Kevin Killian, "Zoo Story"

This guy really likes cats.

(from Impossible Princess)

Every night, a guy sneaks into the zoo to get turned on by the big cats. And think about the 1982 Nastassja Kinski movie Cat People. And then, to nobody's surprise, he takes things too far and pays for it.

Ha Jin, "The Bane of the Internet"

Two sisters, one in Brooklyn, the other in China, correspond via email.

(from A Good Fall)

The one back in China's recently divorced from an abusive husband. She keeps hitting her sister up for money, this time for a car. She threatens to sell her organs if she doesn't get the loan (or is it a donation). Funny, strange little story. The title really doesn't fit.

Kevin Killian, "Too Far"

An American pool salesman meets members of a one-hit-wonder band in England.

(from Impossible Princess)

A little over-thorough and obvious, but kinda funny, this could easily have been ripped from the pages of a gay Penthouse Forum. Another co-author, this time Thom Wolf.

Kevin Killian, "Young Hank Williams"

A mother takes her son to a healer to cure the strange growth on his back.

(from Impossible Princess)

Presumably the kid is the young Hank Williams. Somehow he's a month old but remembers the incident enough to narrate the tale of the healer's fake-out methods and showmanship. Told in short sentences and fragments, and humorously implausible, this is one weird story. And it's got a co-author? Derek McCormack wrote this four-pager with Killian. Not a normal scnaerio, and not a normal story, but it worked out fine.

Ha Jin, "A Good Fall"

A Chinese monk is let go from his temple in New York City.

(from A Good Fall)

There's a certain type of simplicity in the title track to Ha Jin's latest collection. It's not like an allegory. More like, maybe, young adult fiction? I'm not trying to demean the story — I really enjoyed it — it's just that the narrative is so straight-forward and explanatory. Maybe it's just the right mood for a story about a monk going through simultaneous crises of money, pride, illness and identity. Even though the guy's problems are very much in the real world, there's this oddly earnest serenity.

Steve De Jarnatt, "Rubiaux Rising"

A drug addicted, Gulf War vet/amputee is trapped in an attic during Hurricane Katrina.

(from Best American Short Stories 2009)

He sees gray light squeezing through rippage in the curling tarpaper lining the inside of this well-built roof. Wood is bare, creosoted here and there, but no paint.

Yeah, that summary is a handful, but this is actually not a heavy-handed or melodramatic story. It's kinda simple and brilliant and weird. Wait, what?! Is this the same Steve De Jarnatt who wrote Strange Brew? And the guy who wrote Strange Brew directed Cherry 2000? Turns out yes. Dude just got his MFA from Antioch. This is his first published short story. And, I believe, the only link between the Best American series and Bob and Doug McKenzie.

Alyson Hagy, "Border"

A boy steals a dog and goes hitchhiking.

(from Ghosts of Wyoming)

There's a precise (if hard to verbalize) kind of mood on every page, in every sentence. It's a feeling of arcane wildness. The dim highways and open country, the hitchhiking, the coin-flip kindness/meanness of strangers met on the road — it feels like a rusted over, pre-cell phone version of America a passing reader like myself may hope still exists. Good story, too, with swift bits of tension and horror.

"Yurt," Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

A teacher comes back from her sabbatical in Yemen.

(Best American Short Stories 2009)

It was the first week of May, and she was holding court in the teachers’ lounge, her hair nearly down to her waist and her big belly protruding over her lap. Above the belly, Ms. Duffy laughed and swayed and gestured freely with her hands, as if to say, “What—this old thing?”

Ms. Hempel couldn’t take her eyes off it. It looked as tough as a gourd.

This is my first short story in a long while, after my own Infinite Jest-related sabbatical. Loved the book. I didn't go for this story however. It wasn't bad (obviously — the BASS stamp, if nothing else, guarantees great writing on a sentence-by-sentence basis) just a little dull. I guess you have to be in the mood to read a story about savoring moments and what have you.

Read it yourself, here.

David Eagleman, "Circle of Friends"

After you die, you stop meeting new people.

(from Sum)

Another amazing and brief imagining of the afterlife, with a killer last line I didn't see coming and won't spoil except to say it's a thinker. In fact, Sum contains 41 different ideas on what the afterlife might be like, and all are so tiny they are bound to raise more questions than they can answer in a page or two. It's all bare bones when you leave the flesh behind.

David Eagleman, "Sum"

After you die you do your life with new sorted by functions.

(from Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives)

In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together.

That's the first line. From there, it becomes a list of what you relive and how long. Simple, short, brilliant, weirdly blissful. I heard this story read by Jeffrey Tambor on RadioLab recently, which is what prompted me to go out and buy the book. You can read "Sum" here. But I also recommend you check out the "After Life" episode of RadioLab and subscribe tot he podcast. It turns me on to interesting things all the time.

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, "The Fountain House"

Following a deadly bus crash, a father goes to the hospital to get his daughter out of the morgue.

(from The New Yorker, Aug. 31, 2009)

There once lived a girl who was killed, then brought back to life. That is, her parents were told that she was dead, but they weren’t allowed to keep her body.

Short and perfect. It just captures so well that vivid but not 100% lucid it-was-my-house-but-it-wasn't dream feeling. What's real, and what's a trick of the subconscious? It's deliciously vague and spooky. I don't believe I've ever used deliciously before, like that, and I don't approve. But I recommend the story, which you can read here.

Jess Wells, "The Rookery"

The junior sexed up falconer considers taking a wife.

(from Bitten)

This is a collection of Dark Erotic Stories with a nice shiny snake on the cover. But, yeah, I don't have high hopes for it. This dark erotic story concerns father and son falconer whose birds are, like, their sexual mood rings. And, it's bawdy and ridiculous. It's well-written, but.

J.C Hallman, "The Hospital for Bad Poets"

A bad poet gets treated by the bad poetry EMS.

(from The Hospital for Bad Poets)

This is the title track from Hallman's upcoming collection. It's a story, I guess. But I think it would work better as some kind of really out-there late-in-the-show SNL sketch. Which is not to say it's, like, really funny (or not funny — oh 12:45 SNL). It's just all premise, and it sticks around a few pages past its welcome.
Man, I haven't read a story in a while. I'm still embroiled in the increasingly infinite-seeming Infinite Jest.

Nick Arvin, "The Accident"

A couple seems on the verge of a break-up when they witness a car accident.

(from The Normal School, Spring 2009)

"We've not broken up," I said. "Have we? We haven't."

I was very surprised that the small bio in the back of the magazine described the author as somebody with considerable experience. This story, while certainly interesting, seemed, at times, overwritten. As I read, I noted moments that called for tweaking, tightening, obfuscating. Many of the moves were telegraphed. Which is not to say I didn't like it. I rarely finish reading something I'm not in some way engaged with. This story, with its vivid description of a dark, lonesome highway, will stick with me. I wonder if that kind of scene is as frightening for the average reader as the car crash.
There's a pic of John Linnell of They Might Be Giants, because I couldn't find the magazine cover anywhere online and this story just put "The End of the Tour" in my head.

Kenneth Calhoun. "Nightblooming"

A bunch of old jazz players hires a young drummer for their next gig.

(from The Paris Review #189)

The sun tilts though the trees and everywhere are shafts of dust. We're just a speck in the grand whirling scheme, but at least we're making noise.

I spend at least some of my time at work reading and editing music criticism. I like it, It's a dance about architecture, yes, and the dance is difficult. This Calhoun guy, in his description of the band's gig, nails it, makes you hear it in your head, or picture it. And he write about his characters with the same technical beauty. Like some jazz, this story zigs a little when you might expect a zag, but it's not pretentious. Really, comparing anything to jazz it lame, but I'm not going to delete that cause you get me.
Read this story here.

Jill McCorkle, "PS"

The final letter from the divorced woman to the marriage councilor.

(from The Atlantic Fiction 2009)

But I did like how you always had the daily paper and People magazine in your bathroom, except sometimes when I started reading, I forgot that I had to go back in there and hear what a difficult person I am. Remember that time you had to come and get me and I told you I was feeling sick? What I was actually doing was reading about David Koresh and thinking how Jerry’s new religion was getting on my nerves, but at least he wasn’t that bad. Not yet anyway. Of course, I wanted to know what to be looking for in case the turn he’d already taken got worse.

Liked this one. A straightforward premise made a little jagged here and there by each revelation. I mean, yeah, it's a tiny bit schticky but that's cool cause it's funny, too. It doesn't really feel "literary" (or whatever you want to call it when the narrator starts working the metaphors) until the final page which really works for an exercise like this.
Read it here. Read an interview with Jill McCorkle here.

Garth Nix, "Punctuality"

The Emperor takes his clone-daughter Ilugia to see the Punctuality Drive.

(from The New Space Opera 2)

Look, I like nerds. (I've been called one, though I believe myself better filed under "dork.") But the nerdery in this story is just lame. The Star Sapphire Throne? The Sixth-first Empress of All Known Space? It's all so ’70s and... uncool. My god. I've crossed over.

Téa Obreht, "The Laugh"

Oh crap, hyenas.

(from The Atlantic Fiction 2009)

I was torn. On one hand, the tension was brilliant, like a decent slasher flick. The dark, the quiet, insanely open outdoors, the cramped empty house, the unseen killer, the flashlight darting around. I genuinely thought this story would have some non-flashbacking action. And it kinda does, a little. I don't wanna give things away. Anyway, here's the other hand: It's clumsy, it's awkward, it expects you to believe somebody forgot his gun wasn't loaded, maybe even expects you to forget it. Which, no way. But, hell, it's a good monster story.
That's a pic of wildebeests I screencapped from the Africam.

J.G. Ballard, "Manhole 69"

Three guys are given an experimental surgery that eliminates their need to sleep.

(from The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard)

And then the people go crazy and everybody's stiff and plain and there's no mistaking this for a modern story. Just so silly and stiff. It needs some fun, some more personality, though it is certainly interesting. Know what else it needs? A new title. I read this on the Peter Pan to New York to see Superchunk and I wondered if anybody caught a glance of the title at the top of the right-hand pages. Way over the top. Nobody would name a story "Manhole 69" these days unless it was, you know, supposed to be dirty. Ridiculous.
So, there's a pic I took of Superchunk. There was no architect designed this view.

Craig Hartglass, "Pigs"

Over the years, a customer's obsession with an aloof bank teller simmers.

(from One Story #120)

He remembered the very beginning, when she started at the bank, how her black hair filled the booth with a fiery charm that managed to cut through the meanness of her personality, her flagrant disregard and dismissal of him, and his own wondering: was it his lack of height or the gap between his teeth or the bump in his nose or his messy work clothes and boots or something altogether different?

It took me a few pages to realize just how much this story had on its mind. It's weird to think of a storyline only advancing during/focusing on one man's visits to the bank. Because that's, what, 30 minutes a week? Over years? It's a good excuse to see the teller's incremental changes, like she's under a strobe light. But, surely something was going on in the life of our "protagonist." Or maybe not so much. This story left me thinking.
Read an interview with Craig Hartglass here.

John Burnside, "The Bell Ringer"

A woman in an unhappy marriage takes a bell ringing class.

(from the O. Henry Prize Stories 2009)

And she develops a crush a young man in her class. Also her husband's sister confides that she's having an affair. This was a mostly plain and unexciting story, well written but full of small action. Except for the end which is a fun surprise. Fine, fine, fine. But it's summer. Give me some of that good time reading.

J.G. Ballard, "The Concentration City"

Physics student Franz M. hops a train and heads west, hoping to end up anywhere but the city.

(from The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard)

Up, down, east, west — the city must have an edge, right? I suppose this story could be called ominous, dark, dystopian, etc. I'd also add "kooky." What a funny little nutball of a story. It has a surprise ending that solves nothing, an inconsistent narrator, a loony-tunes mood, a truly memorable existence where free space is the hottest commodity in an endless urban maze controlled by some kind of totalitarian authority. Yes. This is good.
Read it here.

E.V. Slate, "Purple Bamboo Park"

The maid and the family go to a park.

(from Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009)

This was a slow build, and there were moments early on where I was sure this was going to be dull, annoying, innocuous. This picked up pretty soon and the end was not just fun and action-packed, but beautifully written. This blog has more and better things to say about this story, and a Ha Jin piece also in the collection.

Geoffrey Becker, "This Is Not a Bar"

A guy and his girlfriend go to his guitar teacher's gig at a bar, where they meet another student.

(from The Cincinnati Review, Summer 2009)

Except it's not actually a bar. It's a fake bar, for show, that for some reason, or no reason, has hired a jazz trio. And none of the characters are curious about the fake bar. They marvel at how realistic it looks but, when left alone, don't get up and fiddle with the taps and bottles. They don't get a straight answer as to why in hell there's a fake bar and they don't pursue it. Oh, of course. Fake bar. Can you get us something from the real bar and bring it on over? How many times will I accidentally sit down at a fake bar? Fake bar fake bar fake bar.
This story was funny, and unsettlingly non-linear. Because the narrator is so wordy and over-explanatory, I assumed things would unfold in some sensible arc. Instead, it surprised me by going free form. It worked and it didn't work in the same way that jazz does and doesn't: Either your audience approves your out-there daring or they drink up and leave because you're just honking out random notes and calling it art. Sometimes a little of both. Eye of the beholder, etc. I liked the story.

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, "The Nursery"

A boy accidentally kills a teammate during wrestling practice and, kicked out of school, goes to work with his mom in the nursery.

(from The Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009)

This one had lots of what I love about short stories, and a lot of what I know people hate. First, the hate. Even though it's short, "The Nursery" is arduously slow and deliberate. It is quiet. Despite its intense subject matter, it builds to a whimper, a decisive but passive anticlimax. All true, but I didn't mind all that. Except the slowness, I guess. I like it when an author immerses the reader in a specific subculture, for lack of a better word. Fisherman stories that teach you how to fish. Time travel stories that lay some theoretical metaphysics on you. This was a story about growing plants and flowers in greenhouses, and it dropped some knowledge on me. Doesn't hurt that I am currently growing my own mint and such in a pot out back. The point is, I was sold on the nursery life, believed in its virtues, believed Lunstrum knew all she needed to know.
Here's Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum's homepage.That's where I got that photo. I'm gonna be reading a lot from this collection, and I don't wanna use the jacket 20 times. Plus she's cute.

Graham Joyce, "An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen"

A British soldier in the Gulf steps on a landmine.

(from The Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009)

I’m in the turret with the gunner. Phosphorescent flashes keep popping from miles up ahead, and they’re followed by what I want to call a flutter; it’s like your eye goes aquiver for a moment. And there’s a smell in the air, nothing like the usual reek of burning and high-ex. I don’t like it. When it comes to combat I don’t much like anything I haven’t seen or smelled before.

Crazy story. Really seemed like this was going to be a serious, firmly rooted-in-reality kinda story. Horrors of war and such. Turns out it's kinda serious, but insane. Fun and horrifying. The narrator turns out to be an expertly non-reliable kind of guy. Great story to start off the collection. This was originally published in The Paris Review. They have an excerpt here.
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I've never been very successful at maintaining a short-story-a-day pace. And things are about to get a whole lot worse, as I am taking part in Infinite Summer. That's where you read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest over the summer. A bunch of people are doing it, I gather. The book is huge. I'm enjoying it so far, but I've never been very successful at reading whole novels. Had some good experiences lately, though. So. We'll see.

Right now I've got three songs in my head:
1) "Indian Summer" by Beat Happening, the unofficial theme song for the project, I say.
2) "David Foster Wallace" by Tsunami. Brilliant Mistake still rocks my world.
3) "Out on the Wing" by Superchunk. No DFW-ish reason, it's just stuck in there. Although, hmm, it is about flying, just like the Tsunami song.
So yeah, a bunch of old school indie hits. No apologies. Infinite Jest is from 1997. And it is infinite.

C.C. MacApp, "And All the Earth a Grave"

An overstock of coffins triggers a national trend.

(from 33 Science Fiction Stories)

There’s nothing wrong with dying — it just hasn’t ever had the proper sales pitch!

Everybody wants a coffin now. It's advertising. This is sort of satire, but mostly just a quirky little fable. You can listen to this story here.

John Cory, "Egocentric Orbit"

Early astronauts become unhinged by their journeys around the Earth.

(from 33 Science Fiction Stories)

Because they realize they're the center of the universe. Funny little story. Kinda skipping around this big and harmless sci-fi Kindle e-book. Read it here.

G.C. Edmondson, "Blessed Are the Meek"

Earthlings encounter a civilization of laidback aliens.

(from 33 Science Fiction Stories)

But there's a twist at the end, kind of... Say what? This story's from 1955? That explains some things. What kind of a crackpot sci-fi collection did I buy on the Kindle for like $.99 or whatever? You can read it here, somehow.

Peter Baily, "Accidental Death"

Human astronauts meet some outer space jerks.

(from 33 Science Fiction Stories)

Scientific investigations into this have been inconclusive, but everyone knows that some people are lucky and others aren't. All we've got are hints and glimmers, the fumbling touch of a rudimentary talent.

The Changs are these deviously cruel pranksters who look like cats. They make beer and telescopes. They learn English in Their stunts, it turns out, is not merely a cute little side pursuit. As the doomed astronaut says in his final recording, don't trust them. A funny, weird little diversion of a story. I read it on the loaner Kindle.

Téa Obreht, "The Tiger's Wife"

A tiger escapes from the zoo in WWII Poland (I think).

(from The New Yorker, June 8 & 15, 2009)

The perspective changes every so often, starting with the tiger who's been domesticated by captivity but still driven, somewhat by instincts. After that, we're inside the heads of people (not as cool) who live in the small village where the tiger takes up residence as a rural legend/nuisance/scourge. Kind of an awesome story from start to finish. If there's a tiger genre, I want in.

Chimimnda Ngozi Adichie, "The Thing Around Your Neck"

You win the visa lottery and leave Lagos for America.

(from The Thing Around Your Neck)

You ended up in Connecticut, in another little town, because it was the last stop of the bus you got on. You walked into the restaurant nearby and said you would work for two dollars less than the other waitresses. The owner, Juan, had inky black hair and smiled to show a bright yellow tooth. He said he had never had a Nigerian employee but all immigrants worked hard. He knew, he'd been there. He'd pay you a dollar less, but under the table, he didn't like all the taxes they were making him pay.

This one was awesome. It's the gripping second person story of Akunna, a young woman moving from Nigeria to New England, dealing with all kinds of well-meaning ignoramuses, most notably her trust fund boyfriend whose open-mindedness annoys her from the get-go. Yeah, it's a little preachy, but the heroine is just so three-dimensional, so fleshed out by each phrase and action, you buy it all. I love the way we experience her annoyance, and sympathize, even though she's often unable to put her grievances into words.
Read it here.

Stephen King, "Willa"

David leaves the train station and goes looking for his wife.

(from Just After Sunset)

This warrants a Spoiler Alert tag: It's a rather remarkable coincidence that I read this story right after reading "A Haunted House" by Virginia Woolf. Neither is new. Both concern ghostly couples living in a sort hazy existence between the real world and whatever comes next. David and Willa, though, don't know they're not alive. All they know is they need to take a train that could come by any time now. It's a freaky, tense kind of story. Eerie, I guess would be the word. Simply told, to heighten suspense and keep us in the dark. I keep meaning to read more Stephen King.

Virginia Woolf, "A Haunted House"

Two ghosts wander around their old house.

(from A Haunted House and Other Stories)

Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure — a ghostly couple.

Kind of a peacefully spooky story. Some of the language was so vague, maybe antiquated?, that I wasn't always sure Ii was picking up on everything I was supposed to. Still it was lovely. I wouldn't say I'm afraid of Virginia Woolf, but it's early. This is the first thing of hers I've read.
I read this on a (loaner) Kindle. You can read it here.

Alex Burrett, "My Goat Ate Its Own Legs"

A goat eats its own legs.

(from My Goat Ate Its Own Legs)

Actually I read pretty much all of this collection, but I'm not gonna post about each story, because I'm reviewing it for the mothership. And this would turn into some kind of Burrettblog if I made 31 posts on the same book. My opinions didn't vary that much. I felt about this story the way I felt about most of the stories: It was entertaining. It felt easy. It didn't really tax my brain. My favorites from the collection: "Human Abattoir Project" and "The Beast of Bethgelart." For my more complete thoughts on the book, you'll have to find my review when it becomes available. I don't believe I'll link to it.

Dennis Cooper, "Three Boys Who Thought Experimental Fiction was for Pussies"

The narrator ponders three asses he has known.

(from Ugly Man)

A short paragraph for each butt. Funny, I guess. Didn't do much for me.

Truman Capote, "One Christmas"

A kid leaves his Alabama house to spend Christmas with his dad in New Orleans.

(from The Complete Stories of Truman Capote)

I don't know much about Capote. Seeing the movie was enough to trick my mind's ear into reading this story in Phillip Seymour Hoffman's gentle screech. I was lent this book (thanks LZ!) a long time ago but swiftly lost track of it during a move (sorry LZ!). So, it's possible I was supposed to read "Christmas Memory" — I remembered only that the story recommended to me had something to do with Christmas or holidays reindeer. I have a feeling it wasn't "One Christmas," though I did find it to be a charming little nostalgia trip about a spoiled-ish Depression era kid from a broken home learning a little bit about manipulation and compassion. Fine story. Didn't blow me away.
I'm not sure why this exists, but hey it's related. Looks like they made a movie out of this story, somehow.

Craig Raine, "Love Affair With Secondaries"

Piotr, married to Basia, gets caught having an affair with Agnieszka.

(from The New Yorker, June 1, 2009)

One day he expected to read a poem about his eyebrows. Or a poem with his phone number or his address in the title: “Ul. Sienkiewicza 35 m.5.” Especially since his apartment was often the easiest place for the lovers to meet—as they were going to meet on this rainy day in June.

Quirky little midlife crisis sex story. I enjoyed the over-the-top soap operaticness of it, like some "ribald" indie film where you know how things are going to go and then they go there and you smile because hey, we're all having a good time. As serious as it should be to get caught committing adultery, here the crime felt more like a move in a big, dramatic, silly game. That stakes were low. Fine by me.
I read a Craig Raine story once before. I liked this one better. Read "Love Affair With Secondaries" here. That photo is by far the smuttiest moment in the history of this web site, but if it's classy enough for the New Yorker, I suppose it meets my decency standards.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, "Cell One"

Her big brother Nnamabia goes to prison.

(from The Thing Around Your Neck)

“How much did they give you for my gold?” our mother asked him. And when he told her she placed both hands on her head and cried, “Oh! Oh! Chi m egbuo m! My God has killed me!” I wanted to slap her. My father asked Nnamabia to write a report: how he had pawned the jewelry, what he had spent the money on, with whom he had spent it. I didn’t think that Nnamabia would tell the truth, and I don’t think that my father thought he would, but he liked reports, my professor father, he liked to have things written down and nicely documented.

This falls into a category of short story I rarely enjoy: Horrible Foreign Prison Stories. They drag the reader through the ringer and beat it into your head that things are so corrupt and cruel. I enjoyed this one, though, since the horribleness was only revealed at an angle, told from the perspective of the imprisoned boy's younger sister. The narration was endearing. There was some hope. Do I need a short story to coddle me, to keep me from the harsh truth of things. Sure, sometimes.
Read this story here.

Kelly Link, "Pretty Monsters"

Cabell saves Clementine's life, leading to a lifelong crush. Lee and friends put Czigany and Parci through an Ordeal.

(from Pretty Monsters)

This story was exciting. An adventure story. So much damn fun. It's got (at least) two major storylines barely connected to each other. Lots of distinct and likable characters, too. Underneath it all, and even when things get meta, there's this feeling that Link gets it. She's part of the modern existence and so are her characters.

Ben Stroud, "Eraser"

His stepfather wants him to toughen up. They go fishing a lot.

(from One Story, #119)

I go sit behind the steering wheel and look at the screen mounted there. It shows how deep the lake is below the boat, and the size of any fish passing below. I wonder if it would show a dead body, if there's a picture programmed in it for that. See, son, a dad'll say, tapping on the screen, that's a child. We only need the small net.

When the kid's not making snide remarks about the polluted man-made lake they go fishing on or his cruel stepfather, he's carefully erasing numbers out of his math textbook. This was a fun one. Very sarcastic, very humorous. This Stroud guy gets good mileage out of shorter sentences, and breaks up the text with logical but unexplained chapter breaks.
One Story has an interview with Stroud here.