Across the Bridge is the ninth and final story by Mavis Gallant to be featured in the Best American series.
Gallant is a master storyteller.
There’s just one problem for me.
I don’t like her stories.
I believe I gave her a fair shot in my early treatment after my first exposure to her writing. But as I read more of her…I just found that she wasn’t to my tastes.
That’s about all I have to say about that.
As these short stories allow us, and for a reader to fully take advantage of them, one must trust the author, suspend reality, surrender yourself and become someone else.
A great author can take you out of your "body" and drop you into a character of their choosing. Of course, you have to play along, fully immerse yourself in the story, and not throw up any obstacles to the immersion.
And what is terrific about this is that you can close the book and return to "your life" but still retain the life of that character if you feel the necessity.
The written story really is an incredible device – as is the mind that absorbs and translates the strange symbols printed on the pages.
Through this story that first appeared in the New England Review, Robert Olen Butler invites you to slip into the mind of an elderly Vietnamese man nearing death as he reflects upon his life, visiting departed relatives and acquaintances…even the restless ghost of Ho Chi Minh.
I've often wondered about my final days. Morbid? I don't think so. These thoughts allow me to refocus on my life's priorities – to live in the moment with the people I love. It also allows me to take stock of my life is/was and alter my course, if necessary.
I also wonder if I'll be of sound mind at my time of death to even reflect as this character does. Will I have my memories? Will they torture me in my last minutes, or will I just simply fade away? What purpose would be served as I lay there, torturing myself with these thoughts?
Perhaps, when it is my time, there will be the option to customize your last days. To make sure that your last breaths are comfortable and that you are at peace. That would be wonderful.
Silver Water first appeared in Story magazine. I once had a nice collection of Story magazines, and it pains me to write the word once in this sentence.
I believe they were all “donated” to a local thrift store. I like to imagine that they were snatched up by another lover of the short story, but in reality, they probably sat on the shelf in the store and were dumped after not selling.
I suppose they were only valuable to me, purchased from a used book store in downtown Norfolk in the mid 00’s with birthday money from my grandmother. I remember writing that down in the cover of one of the editions.
They stood in formation on my bookshelf for several years, and I’d pull one out every so often, thumb through it, read a story and return it to its home.
Amy Bloom makes three appearances in The Best American anthology. Her first appearance was in 1991 with Love is Not a Pie.
We will visit with Amy again in 2000.
Love is Not a Pie is a beautiful story and compelled me to write one of my favorite posts that detailed a past spent with my father—the post that was made in April of 2017 – just a few short months before he died.
Silver Water tackles the too important issue of mental health and, more importantly, how a family copes with it when it strikes and completely cripples one of its members. I remember discussing schizophrenia with my father – he, of course, supervised a few of them over many years. I was baffled at how this disease could completely ravage a person – and their family.
Having a loved one suffer from such a debilitating mental illness is one of my greatest fears. Your mother, wife, son, or daughter could be completely “normal” one day…and then, the disease creeps in, grabs that portion of their brain, their soul – and takes them from you. It’s so heartbreaking.
Once again, we are shown, life is suffering.
"Nothing is bothering me. It’s just odd to be back. You know, like, when you go away and then you come back and it’s, like-"
A Different Kind of Imperfection was first published in The New Yorker, fittingly, is a New York story ( I wonder if there were short story writers that purposely wrote New York City stories in an attempt to get them in the New Yorker with the thought that they would actually get published there and then propelled into literary stardom…).
As I do with these stories, and especially with the stories published in the 90s, I travel back to those days and reflect on my life and draw parallels between the story and what I was going through then...and sometimes now. This one is very easy to do as it features a character that has returned home to NYC on a break from college. He lives with his single mother (father died when the boy was 10) and lazes about the house reading a book from his father’s collection, wondering what an underlined phrase means to the now deceased father, contemplating the lives of his younger parents and his father’s life as he learned that he had cancer and was dying.
I’m pretty sure I just summed up the story well enough - of course without getting too deep into the underlying meanings...etc. – it’s beautiful – several sentences are just straight-up art.
Thomas Beller appears only once in the BASS anthology, but what an incredible writer he is - and incredibly faithful to NYC.
I have done this story a disservice though. This disservice is keeping with my track record on these stories, so it’s not entirely unfair to this story.
I read this story earlier this year. Perhaps it was April…May or June. One should remember, though, what year it is…2020 in the year of the forever month of March. Having read the story so many months ago and now it is mid-September, yes, I re-read it…if you call speed reading it an actual read.
I am once again playing catch-up with these stories. I’m about 5 stories into this anthology and have only posted about 2 before this one.
Life once again got in the way. I enjoyed the summer with the family without having a job. Summer began to fade, and I was fortunate enough to secure employment. School has started for the kids (virtual), and I am working from home too.
I am once again turning to this blog to provide some stability in what is a boat in churning seas. I am not threatened by the waters, I just need that stabilizing tool this blog provides.
This outlet, this blog has been here for me for the last 12 years, and I am happy to turn to it once again.
I remember returning home several times during university breaks. I had grown, and the distance between my mother and I had grown too. She so desperately wanted to know what was going on in my life, for me to open up, but that pleading, those requests shut me up tighter against her. I don’t suppose that many young men feel too inclined to open up fully to their mothers concerning their exploits when they are between 18 and 25. We were still boys though we like to believe we were men.
This story and the relationship the main character has with the memory of his father and his (living) mother allowed me to reexamine those trips home and my behavior back then. It’s sad to think about the way I acted – and I need to be realistic in thinking that my children could also not feel the need to share their lives with me no matter how much I wish them to.
Lessons learned? Yes - once again, from the best teacher - these stories.