Days of Heaven - Rick Bass

                                                

So happy to encounter Rick Bass along this journey once again. I was first introduced to him in 2012 with Cats And Students, Bubbles And Abysses. Looking back at that post, it seems that I enjoyed the story but had a bit of trouble fully understanding it. Meeting him again in 2017, through The Legend Of Pig-Eye was welcome and I really had a great time reading about the publication of the story and and thinking about the message. 

When I saw that Bass had a story in this collection, I was really looking forward to reading it - and more so after reading the first story in the collection that I wasn't especially fond of.

Days of Heaven is a beautiful story. Well, perhaps beautiful is the wrong word - but I can't seem to come up with another word right now that fits how I felt after reading it. 

I suppose what I enjoyed most about this story is that - well, it's a story. It didn't force me to seek something out within it (not that I don't mind the challenge). Bass simply, through his composition told a great story. 

A large part of what endears me to a story of course is how well I can relate to it - this seems obvious - right? 

I could see myself in another life, as a 20 something living as a caretaker in a cabin out west. I could see myself sharing the perspective of the main character, behaving like him and thinking of others, as he thinks of them. 

In the Contributor's Notes section at at the end of the collection, Bass writes quite a lot about the creation of this story and the multiple drafts and edits it went through with his editors (13, if I remember correctly).

In my spreadsheet of BASS authors, we will encounter Rick Bass again in 1996, 1999 and finally in 2001. 

I look forward to spending more time with him.

  

The Best American Short Stories 1992 - Introduction

Start the clock. 

I'm notorious for taking years to read these anthologies. We are 15 books in to this series starting with 1978 back in 2008. 

Back when I started this project, I worked at a newspaper in Virginia. Two weeks ago, I voluntarily left the newspaper (my second home for 19 years). It was a difficult decision, but a move that was necessary. I'm sure in the years and posts to come, I will dive deeper into everything surrounding my departure. These stories have a way of prying out details over time - this is the purpose of this project - it's a bit of therapy. 

I've written several times about the various stages of my life and here we are at another. It'll be very interesting to see what develops.

So, here we are, finally reading the BASS 1992. I loved the 90s and the editor of this volume, in his introduction, touches on one of the reasons why I found that decade so special.

Robert Stone made his first appearance in The Best American Series back in 1998 which I read in 2012. I found his introduction to this volume a little rough - of course perhaps I am out of practice (reading that is). The following passage did catch me though.

"In their variety, these stories reflect what is probably the most significant development in late-twentieth-century American fiction, the renewal and revitalization of the realist mode, which has been taken up by a new generation of writers. This represents less a "triumph" of realism than the obviation of old arguments about the relationship between life and language. As of 1992, American writers seem ready to accept traditional forms without self-consciousness in dealing with the complexity of the world around them."

This final paragraph from the introduction nails it perfectly for me. It's why I found love for the short story in the early 90s.

During my time at Norwich University, I worked as a work study student in the library. I was assigned to the periodicals department where I received incoming magazines and journals. I cataloged the new arrivals and at times, when needed, I assisted in the weeding of older journals from the shelves. Because Norwich was associated with Vermont College at this time, we received copies of important literary journals. When I found a few minutes of down-time between my duties, I would flip through these journals, journals with odd sounding names, Black Warrior Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Missouri Review, Paris Review and the Virginia Quarterly Review just to name a few. I can't readily recall what story or what journal pulled me in, but I was hooked. It was in these journals that the stories I am now reading in the BASS are resurfacing. No doubt, I will run across one or several that seem all too familiar...the years softening my recollection of having actually reading it so many years ago.

Now, the publications and number of stories featured in BASS 1992.

Ploughshares - 1

Story - 3

New England Review - 1

The Atlantic Monthly - 1

Harper's Magazine - 1

The Southern Review - 1

Fiction International - 1

Black Warrior Review - 1

American Short Fiction - 1

The New Yorker - 9

So, as you can see, and it shouldn't come as a  surprise, stories from The New Yorker heavily outweigh the others.

Stone has this to say about the stories from that publication.

"The large number of New Yorker inclusions I think results from the fact that while The New Yorker is still able to attract first-rate submissions, the days are past when there was such a thing as a "New Yorker story." 

Well, lets see about that. I'm very excited to start this new journey - both in my life and with this volume. 

The 90s were my decade - I have faith that these stories will hold up.

Onward!

A Sandstone Farmhouse – John Updike

Well hello there Mr. Updike!

Our society has changed quite a bit since we first met back in January 2010.

You were in 1980, and your story was featured in Playboy and I was reading it across time 30 years later.

For many, then and now, your work appearing in that publication would be a natural fit. There were quite a few opinions of your writing back in 1980  and into the 90s (plenty of hate) the early 2000s as well as in 2010 – and now, when you are discussed/studied, their opinions are colored by our societal shifts…as they should be. 

I loved your writing back in 2010, and now almost 10 years later, I still love your writing.

It was this anthology that brought me closer to you. I saw you develop and it allowed me to explore the critical discussion of your work. I learned so much.

And now, you are back in my life.

I rushed to this story, not only because it is the last one in this edition, and I’m so over this particular year, but it had been some time since we last had some time together.

I finished your story well over a month ago and I fell down the rabbit hole of researching you again.

That was a mistake.

I should have left well alone.

I climbed out of the hole, lessons learned, and here we are.

So, this story…

About three years ago, my sister and I cleaned out my mother’s house. We moved her into an apartment. It was the house that I moved into when I was 5 and my sister was 2.

We disturbed dust and pulled pictures off the walls that hadn’t moved in close to 40 years.

Curtains were pulled down and light shined in corners that were dark for a lifetime.

We did the cleaning in the summer and it was hot and sweaty. 

We piled boxes on the curb that were picked through by strangers. What they didn’t scavenge, the city trash collectors picked up with a giant claw truck.

We held an estate sale allowing strangers to tromp through the house and pay cents for what we and she spent good money on years before.

The house was too big for her and physically, she was too small for the house.

I thought a lot about that move and my mother while reading this story.

On occasion, I’ll drive past that house, my mother’s the one I was raised in and the memories come flooding back. 

Playing in the front yard, riding up and down the block on my bike, my skateboard. The early mornings - pushing my bike past the parked cars in the driveway so I could deliver the daily newspaper. 

Sitting on the front porch with friends. 

I look up at the attic window, my room, my refuge from age 13 to 18. 

The days I spent lying on my bed looking down at the street where I now sit in an idling car looking up at the empty windows.

So, Updike’s Sandstone Farmhouse took me back to my house, to those memories of EVERYTHING that happened there. 

Updike does that to me  - and I appreciate and love his writing for this. 

Dog Stories – Francine Prose

“Dog Stories” comes partly out of my continuing interest in the way people tell their stories – in this case, stories about dogs. … People never talk about nothing, not even when they seem to. There are always secret and interesting reasons for the stories they decide to tell and for the moments at which they choose to tell them.” – Francine Prose

I don’t find myself in the position much to be on the receiving end of a good dog story. Most stories that come my way are through work, and I can’t really call those “stories”.

I suppose a reason that I’m not on the receiving end is that I’m rarely in social situations that allow others to tell me stories. I don’t have a large social circle and most stories that come my way are told to me by my children.

The advice that Prose gives above though can be used with those stories because my kids are great at choosing the times to tell me their stories.

Through this BASS reading exercise, I have found a great spark to tell some of my stories. The story randomly finds its way to me across time and provides the spark to ignite the process of thought. Sometimes this process can last days, weeks or months. Sometimes I can relate to a story immediately.

What is unfortunate though is that I find myself falling into the habit of not reading and in turn, not telling my 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.

Bologoye – Mikhail Iossel

                                            Mikhail Iossel c/o the author

I was very surprised to find the very active twitter account of Mikhail Iossel. 

I’m not surprised that he has one; I’m surprised that I actually made it to his story in the BASS while he is still alive! This, of course, is a critique of my lack of reading and writing.

It was nice to read Bologoye – to reach this story at about the half-way point in the anthology. It pulled me in and I think it’s going to propel me through to the end of the book.

Reading this story was like visiting an old friend.

My interest/casual study of Russia/The Soviet Union began back in the early 1980s. I can say that my interest came about with the addition to my family of a step-father who was very interested in American foreign policy towards the Soviets. He was a rabid news consumer – we always had cable news on in the house and we even received the morning and afternoon newspapers. During breakfast, before school, he would provide commentary on the latest news out of DC and Moscow. I was well aware of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the death of Brezhnev and the weirdness that encompassed the Andropov and Chernenko years. Gorbachev came along in ’85 and by ’86 I was in high school and my obsession with US/USSR relations was pretty well developed and growing. I sought out books, music and photos…the local university library even subscribed to Pravda (I can neither confirm nor deny several missing Pravda issues from 1989).

In 1990-early ’91 I focused on surviving my freshman year at Norwich. I did work in the library where their Russian collection was quite large given the summer Russian School program they hosted.

In the fall of ’91, I began my formal study of the language/culture and politics – changing my major and selecting courses that focused on my interest.

This was a great time to really focus in on the country because, by the end of 1991, the Soviet Union was no more.

I continued my studies and in the summer of ’93, as you may have read here before, I made a trip over to Russia. The early ‘90s in Russia was quite interesting.

In the years after my formal schooling, I still studied the country, (the first AOL news story I clicked on after we got a dial-up modem and the software disc at my father's was one of Yeltsin).

Of course, in the late 90’s I made it back over to that part of the world – Romania, and during my time there, I felt the ghosts of old influences that the Kremlin had on the country.

Now, today, as I read this story, I am taken back to those days. I can taste the shared warm beer, the shared bottles of wine drunk between the moving train cars (we drank ours on a train from Moscow to Volgograd). The endless shots of vodka - I can recall the smells of the Soviet apartment blocs – with their massive stairwells and the eyes of neighbors always watching. I can recall the feeling knowing that I was followed, that someone “inspected” my room from time-to-time.

I appreciate stories like this to transport me back to those days – stories by a writer that weaves the words to create scenes that transport you, the reader, having been there years before – right back there again.

This has happened so many times with the short stories in this anthology – their inclusion is justified by their power.