Willing – Lorrie Moore

What I recognize and appreciate about Moore’s writing is that I find it very accessible. 

In a story that Moore calls a “stray” on her steps, she does a wonderful job of pulling me in and capturing my interest in a character that I normally wouldn’t find an attraction to.

I think that many can relate to this character as at some point in our life we have felt that we were once “something”, or “could have been something” but as our life moved forward things just didn’t pan out the way that they should’ve. Perhaps those instances are just phases which land us in uncomfortable situations – (not necessarily a Days Inn), but sometimes these things can sink you for awhile.

The story felt very early ‘90s...perhaps that aided in the appeal for me. 

Moore was in her early 30s when she wrote this story – a bit outside of the Generation X label but perhaps this gave her the skills to translate some of those all too familiar clichés used to describe the generation about to get tagged with this label.

But, as a story in a collection, wedged between other shorts, I didn’t feel “full” at the end of the story. 

I was given a taste, a few bites – but a few more would have filled me up and left me completely satisfied.

Moore is a short story powerhouse as we will discover.

This is the second appearance by Moore in The BASS, with her first being in 1990 –  with You’re Ugly Too. 

Moore appears 5 more times in The BASS – 1992, 1993, 1998, 1999 and 2013 with all the stories but one appearing in The New Yorker (outlier is The Paris Review).

Moore was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2004 and in 2015, and she served as the guest editor for a centennial anthology from the series, 100 Years of The Best American Short Stories.

Willing was published in the New Yorker in the May 14, 1990 issue. 

I was still in high school – about a month away from graduation - about to enter into a strange new world.

Viva La Tropicana – Leonard Michaels

 (January 2, 1933 - May 10, 2003)

What a fun story.

Michaels wrote in the Contributor’s Notes, that this story wrote itself.

You can feel it even before you read that. 

This story is written with such authenticity but contains such fantastical imagery in almost a double negative of reality that you have to believe that most of it is…not fiction.

Make sense?

This is the type of story that pulled me back into this anthology – at least for awhile – and I could be so fortunate that the rest of the stories in this volume measure up to its brilliance. 

I see that Moore, Munro, Oats, Prose and my favorite, Updike remain – so perhaps there is hope. 

I hang my hopes that my ability to write again can be ignited by these five authors.

You see, I have found myself saying to myself many times over the past year that “I struggle with original thoughts.”

I believe that I have them but I have a very difficult time voicing them. 

“How could this be?” you may ask as you read my original thoughts.

The struggle is real.

Take this project for example. It’s 2019. 

When I started this project and laid out a rough schedule of how many stories I needed to read each week from the 1978 edition to the latest edition of the anthology, it seemed very “doable”. 

I figured that out roughly 4,000 days ago – yup, almost 11 years ago. 

So now it’s 2019 and I’ve only covered 1978-1991.

A rough calculation of stories from 1991 – 2019 lands me at around 570 stories. 

Ooouufff.

That number hurts. 

Is it out of reach? 

No.

So why did I circle back around to writing about this project and the mountain I must climb to catch-up (Do I even need to catch –up)?

Perhaps this story reassured me that anything is possible. That even the most fantastic, off the wall, schemes can work – if you have the drive and will.

I suppose time is a factor too – which plays in this story - and I do have time. 

Time is one of the most valuable commodities in my life right now. I have found that I was wasting portions of it on meaningless tasks/pursuits. 

Evaluating this project, I see the value in investing my time in reading these stories. 

So, with that, I thank you Leonard Michaels and Viva La Best American Short Stories!

Glossolalia – David Jauss

I’ve written about this several times before – so much so that I am starting to tire of it -  encountering a story at a certain time, a perfect time in my life.

I doubt that this story would have had the same impact on me 10 years ago as it did today. I was living such a different life just 10 years ago.

I might have read this story, thought about it and somehow related to it through the lens of my relationship with my father.

Now, I read the story and lay it across the relationship I have with my sons.

As with many of these short stories, the icing on the cake is applied on the final page. I absolutely love this ending from David Jauss.

  

That night, though, unable to sleep, I got up and went into my son’s room. Standing there in the wan glow of his night light, I listened to him breathe for awhile, then quietly took down the railing we’d put on his bed to keep him from rolling off and hurting himself. I sat on the edge of his bed and began to stroke his soft, reddish blond hair. At first he didn’t wake, but his forehead wrinkled and he mumbled a little dream sound.

                I am not a religious man. I believe, as my father must have, the day he asked me to save him, that our children are our only salvation, their love our only redemption. And that night, when my son woke, frightened by the dark figure leaning over him, and started to cry, I picked him up and rocked him in my arms, comforting him as I would after a nightmare. “Don’t worry,” I told him over and over, until the words sounded as incomprehensible to me as they must have to him, “it’s only a dream. Everything’s going to be all right. Don’t worry.”

Perhaps I am lucky that I, in this day and age, am able to spend so much time with my children. Sure, I have a 9-5 but I am there in the mornings and I am there to put them to bed – every single night. Is this unusual? For some reason, I feel that it is. And I often feel fortunate to be able to have this time with them.

My sons sleep together. It’s nice but I realize that it won’t last long. The oldest will soon want to be in his own bed (which is right above his brother’s – yes they have a bunk bed but both sleep on the bottom).

I am able to check on them before I lay down at night and their innocence, while they lay there together asleep, is almost too much for me to handle.

They live in a worry-free world filled with love and laughter.

We work hard to provide that to them. I have found myself standing in their room silently assuring them that everything will be all right – of course, it’s more me reassuring myself that it’ll be OK.

Yes, it’ll all be OK.