May is Short Story Month, BookMarks Update May, 2023

Read my Review

Friends: The Emerging Writers Network published a post in April, 2007 declaring that May would be Short Story Month, and it seems to have caught on. Literary Hub, Politics and Prose in DC, and other sites have celebrated it this year, so I spent some time looking at the shelves in my library for short stories. To my surprise and delight, I discovered the collected stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, V.S. Pritchett, Alice Munro, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, William Trevor, Katherine Mansfield, Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Vladimir Nabokov, and a few others. Reminded that I hadn't read any short stories for ages, I decided to read some of the best of that literary form.

Fearing that a few hundred pages of stories by the same author might become tiresome, I decided to read one anthology and the first volume of short stories published by four of my favorite mid-20th C authors---Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, John Updike, and Norman Mailer.

But before turning to those books, here's the list of books I read in May:

If you want to read some wonderful short stories, I highly recommend keeping the 'Penguin Book of the American Short Story' on your nightstand. John Freeman, the editor, has done a superb job of selecting stories by the famous (Paley, Singer, Lydia Davis, Cisneros, Sontag, O'Brien, Saunders, Wolff, Lahiri, King) and the less well known but no less talented Dorothy Allison, Lucia Berlin, Percival Everett, Ken Liu, Claire Watkins and others. The beauty of the short story is that in a brief sitting, you meet vivid characters, enter a captivating plot, visit exotic locations, and get another lens on human nature all within a few pages. Among the anthologies I've read, Freeman's is by far the best. Keep this book nearby and read a story before you go to sleep each night. These stories are easily read in 5-15 minutes, but not easily forgotten before you close your eyes on another day.

Now, on to the short stories of Mailer, Roth, Bellow, and Updike, the favorites of my middle age. Rather than their best known work, I chose to read their first volume of short stories to compare how their early styles and topics related to their mature writings. Mailer made it easy by immediately bowing out. In the very first line of his introduction to the 1967 collection, 'The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer', he wrote "It has been remarked that the short fiction of this author is neither splendid, unforgettable, nor distinguished, and I hasten hereby to join such consensus." So much for Norman! I did read two of the stories in this book, and sadly must agree that this colossus of non-fiction and outrageous behavior, the 25 year old author of 'The Naked and the Dead', listed as #51 on Modern Library's list of the best 20th C novels in English, couldn't write a short story.

In contrast, the short story collections of both Roth and Bellow, the product of their early years pulsate and glow with the brilliant writing that characterized their later work. 'Goodbye, Columbus' (which after 63 years I finally learned referred to Ohio's capitol city, not the erstwhile navigator and explorer!) won the National Book Award when Roth was 26 in 1960. Bellow's 'Mosby's Memoirs' didn't receive the same critical acclaim, but he went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1976. In both books, the onrushing torrent of words exploring important questions about life and meaning was there early, and the short stories are a good introduction to their later works.

John Updike, a much more prolific exponent of the short story form (He wrote 189 of them for The New Yorker!) started more slowly, 'The Same Door' felt like a modest effort compared to his later work, perhaps the result of his youth since it was published when he was only 27 and fresh from Harvard and a brief stint with The New Yorker. Too many adjectives and not enough action might also have been the result of his own description of his major topic---small town, middle class, white protestants. Roth and Bellow writing about immigrant Jews in big noisy, dirty cities had the advantage here.

While the short story volumes dominated the month, there were several notable non-fiction books that I highly recommend. Tracy Kidder's 'Rough Sleepers' is an depth recounting of his several years' experience shadowing Dr. Jim O'Connell as he ministered to Boston's unhoused population. It's a moving exploration of character, both O'Connell's and one of his homeless patients, Tony Rinaldi. My guess is that this book will be a prime contender to bring Kidder his second Pulitzer Prize or a National Book Award.

Another exceptional non-fiction book is Arline Geronimus' 'Weathering', a term she coined to describe the constant, daily, inexorable stress experienced by marginalized, 'othered', devalued, and disinvested populations in America, primarily Black and Brown people. In moving anecdotes and compelling data, she shows how being poor and 'othered' has led to higher maternal and infant mortality, shorter life spans, and a burden of chronic disease that significantly reduces the number of healthy years in these populations. Geronimus focuses on the link between poor health, early death, and the stress of being impoverished and disempowered in America today. It's difficult to read but an important message.

The third non-fiction book I'd recommend is George Perec's 'Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One's Books'. Its nine essays are brilliantly humorous and clever while also being seriously thoughtful. Perec, who died in 1982 at 45, was a founding member of Oulipo, a group of French mathematicians, philosophers, and writers who sought to write within a set of constraints. For example, Perec's novel 'The Void' is a lipogram, i.e. there is not a single 'e' in the entire book. In 'Brief Notes' Perec is free of constraint but writes through a conceptual lens that is both entertaining and thought-provoking. The final essay 'Think/Classify' is a list-maker's dream. You should discover this talented writer if you haven't already done so.

As for the other books this month, the Parker was surprisingly disappointing, while the 'Hand of the Small Builder' was fun to thumb through for this fan of New England summer homes. Finally, the poetry of the renowned Robert Lowell and the new-to-me Pattiann Rogers was worth reading for their contrasting styles and subjects. Lowell's striking poems about his daughter, Harriet, and his wife, Elizabeth Hardwick are often painful to read but worth the effort. In contrast, Rogers' poems offer delight and awe as she explores the natural world and her place in it.

Poetry on the Charles this month features works by the distinguished African-American poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes (b. 1901-d.1967). A prolific author of plays, novels, and essays in addition to his poetry, Hughes' work is described by the critic Donald B. Gibson in his introduction to 'Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays' (Prentice Hall, 1973) as different from most of his predecessors among black poets… in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read... Until the time of his death, he spread his message humorously—though always seriously—to audiences throughout the country, having read his poetry to more people (possibly) than any other American poet. While barely skimming the surface of his 700+ page 'Collected Poems', I wanted to share these poems with you:

Here's a quote from a New York Times Book Review essay written by Sadie Stein in January, 2023 in which she sums up her dilemma of not being able to read all the books she wants to.. She addresses that anxiety and unease that we all feel when we gaze at that enormous tower of 'books to be read' by creating an 'anti-bucket list...composed of books that I know or at least believe, I will die without reading....There are always reasons: lack of pleasure, lack of interest, lack of time and mental elasticity....So many books, so little time. If that's true, all the more reason to implement a "Life is Too Short" list. It is not a failure to acknowledge what we will not do. Far from scary, there is comfort in knowing that, as long as we live, and as much as we read, we will never, ever run out." I've started my list with 'Ulysses', 'War & Peace', and Proust. What's on yours?

And here, once again, is this extraordinary quote from Lewis Thomas that has elicited a great number of comments.

"Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely out-numbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

Even more astounding is our statistical improbability in physical terms. The normal, predictable state of matter throughout the universe is randomness, a relaxed sort of equilibrium, with atoms and their particles scattered around in an amorphous muddle. We, in brilliant contrast, are completely organized structures, squirming with information at every covalent bond....

Add to this the biological improbability that makes each member or our own species unique. Each of us is a self-contained, free-standing individual, labeled by specific protein configurations at the surfaces of cells, identifiable by whorls of fingertip skin, maybe even by special medleys of fragrance. You'd think we'd never stop dancing."

Good reading and good travelling!