The Best American Short Stories 1984 - Completed!

I’m letting out a deep sigh I as write this closing for “The Best American Short Stories 1984”.

I had such high hopes for myself when I started this anthology. I felt that I would attack it and read through it with all the gusto as say…the John Gardner edited anthology.

Perhaps I didn’t want to finish this collection. Honestly, the stories collected here by Updike were outstanding. Collected, I think I have enjoyed them the most of all the BASS I have read to this date.

Of course, I did wonderful job of throwing obstacles up in front of my progress.

I read Ian Frazier’s rather large book - “Travels in Siberia” (absolutely wonderful). And reading this book pushed me into my Russian phase which caused me to start this new blog -

http://sonandrussians.blogspot.com/

I’ve spent a good amount of time reading and writing about Tolstoy’s “Resurrection” as my first selection for that journal.

So, in closing, here is the breakdown for BASS 1984

It took -

2 months 29 days

or

12 weeks six days

or

90 days

or

64 week days

Which works out to

One story every 4.5 days.

Gender profile of the anthology - 12 men and 8 women.

Stories from representing certain magazines more than once. - 5 from The New Yorker, 2 from The Georgia review, 2 from The Greensboro Review.

Goodbye John Updike and thanks for some great reads.

Now…1985 is approaching quickly!

Caddies’ Day – Jeanne Schinto

Jeanne Schinto - December 19, 1951

“Dang!” I thought as I saw the title of this final short of BASS 1984.

“A frigg’in sports story…ugh…how I dislike sports stories…”

Well…a sports story I did not get.

It would be too easy for me to write an entry on my feelings concerning our cultures objectification of women…of girls and of youth.

It would be the easy way out, and honestly, the easy way looks pretty good considering the time it has taken me to get through this anthology. I’d simply like to write a couple of paragraphs of my thoughts covering the above and then consider what I would write about in my entry which would close out the BASS 1984.

But…

‘ol Mr. Updike has given me a nice treat in the form of a really good story by Jeanne Schinto. He’s not letting me go just yet.

Good for him.

Nice technique.

But the real credit of course goes to Schinto – It’s her story that provides the reader of the anthology with a fine ending as well as a few things to consider.

As with the other authors I read, I looked Schinto up. Turns out she is still a writer – a journalist. She has a Facebook page so I decided to shoot her a quick message.

She was kind enough to reply before the evening was through.

She wrote that “Caddies’ Day had been rejected by 27 magazines before Greensboro Review took it. She also included this little P.S. - “I see that you're upside down in your FB photo, just like the narrator of my story was, briefly!”

This little sentence added another position in my observation of the story.

Here is my FB photo.

I like the photo because it’s my subtle way of encouraging people who see it and inquire about it to look at the world from a different perspective.

I make a conscious effort daily in most encounters and situations that I find myself in – to position myself differently in order to see what could be hidden or if there is a message that I am missing by approaching things from the “normal” “upright” vantage point.

Was the narrator of this short hung upside down so that she could see the world as it was? Maybe…that could be one interpretation. I though think that for that instant she was hung upside down, she was simply placed in that position to “really” be made aware of her powerlessness.

The men could have continued with their teasing and touching…honestly, their fondling of this young girl – and that too would have conveyed the same message to her. She has no power in this world.

Why was this girl there? Did she venture so close to these men/boys to purposely be fondled? Was it her fault?

Today, in our culture, I think that young girls are being told it’s OK to walk down that path near the Caddies. It’s OK to let them touch you and hang you upside down. There is an excitement to flirt with them and the danger that accompanies the situation you are placing yourself in…you are empowered.

-Wrong-

It’s not safe to walk near the Caddies - it’s not OK to let them fondle you – to hang you upside down.

Sometimes clearer heads to not step in and stop the action. Sometimes things go too far.

I think our culture has done a great disservice to the young women in this country by objectifying them. Youth (very young) and beauty (not natural beauty) are worshipped.

We need to turn ourselves upside down and realize what we have done and are doing to our future. Although - at times I’m afraid it’s too late.

Foreign Shores – James Salter

James Salter - June 10, 1925

Salter’s inclusion by Updike should come as no surprise to those familiar with the works of both authors.

I felt that this was a very masculine story even though it was soaked with two strong female characters. Surprising to me, I felt that the young boy in the story was the strongest of the characters – his presence - his limited lines - they carried a power.

I like the way Salter writes. If you are familiar with my writings here on this journal, you should have a general idea of the sort of writing that I am attracted to. I do enjoy the beautiful turn of phrase and a classical style…but at the same time, I like the brute force of a nice string of sentences that startle the reader. I don’t disapprove the use of a startling scene or a situation that makes the reader uncomfortable (sexually…or morally) because I think that this technique employed correctly by a writer is what makes literature so…well…damn good ( see the works of Joyce Carol Oates). Salter is another writer where I can say “if I were a writer…I’d like to write like him”.

Letters and their contents.

It’s unfortunate that letter writing has fallen out of our culture. Rather than finding a drawer full of letters hiding secrets (as in this story), we find unlocked email accounts and steamy text messages on cell phones.

Electronic characters rather than ink scratched into paper.

Messages that can disappear in old electronic archive folders hidden behind passwords never to be seen by a son or daughter searching for the origins of her parent’s relationship.

We have become so good at hiding who we are – who we choose to present to the world. It’s nearly impossible to really know another person.

Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, parents and best friends – all remain a mystery to each other for entire lifetimes.

It can be what makes relationships so wonderful – the exploration…or so tragic – the discovery.

Bruns – Norman Rush

Norman Rush - October 24, 1933

Interesting author. Rush and his wife served as Co-Peace Corps Country Directors in Botswana from 1978-1983. His experiences there colored his stories – this one not excluded.

Tough story to get through. Honestly, I have trouble reading stories in dialects. They turn me off from the beginning, and I can’t seem to manage them enough to dive deeper into the story.

With this story, I can only guess that it draws on an incident that Rush may have witnessed during his time in Botswana.

His closing two sentences actually wrap the story up for me perfectly.

“There is ruin. It’s perfect.”

Very seldom does a week go by that I don’t think about my time in the Peace Corps. This constant reflection is of course only stimulated more by having M as a wife…but I reflect often on my time there and my memory is still good enough to pick out small details of days and moments that had a great impact on my life.

On our past trips back to Negresti, one of the first things I try to do is to walk the streets. This is a pretty funny desire because when I lived there, I made efforts not to be seen on the streets.

When I walk the streets, I want people to recognize me. I want to see if they have changed – I want to see if they see any change in me.

Negresti is a strange town. It hasn’t changed much in the 10 years since we left. There are far more stores and the selection of merchandise is much greater for the consumer (as opposed to the times when I couldn’t even buy bread or salami).

I walk the streets and I go into the stores and I see the selection and I see that people are buying and I am happy that these products are available to them – but then, there is a slight twinge of sadness deep in me.

I want to hold onto the suffering that I had when I lived there. I want the walks and the stores to be the same. I want the small bars and cafes to only have 3 selections of beer and 2 choices of coffee and 3 brands of cigarettes – rather than the 10 choices of beer, 10 coffees and 10 brands of cigarettes.

I want the cafes to be cold and dark…I want the bars to be cold, dark and filled with the smoke of a days worth of smokers. I want the streets to be broken and cracked – I want to hear people calling out to me and whispering as I pass…

I take comfort in the memories – am I afraid of the progress because it is unknown?

Things to Be Thrown Away – Jonathan Penner

Jonathan Penner - born 1941

My father has a huge basement. This basement has the square footage of the apartment that M and I live in now.

This basement is filled to about 99.35% of its capacity. It is FULL.

Tools, old board games, CDs, old framed pictures, books, kitchen appliances. Rolls of tape, scotch, collectable watches and general crap that he has found and collected over the past 40 years.

I say 40 because he has stuff down there from his college days – stuff that he has carted from his home town in Iowa to PA to VA back to PA to NJ and then back to PA.

Honestly, there really is a lot of stuff in this basement.

Now, what makes me write about his basement in relation to this story, is that I too must make a decision – sometime pretty soon I would imagine – concerning things to be thrown away from his basement.

I’ve written in the past about how he has already started to “give” me things. This process of “giving” is interesting.

He’ll state that if I see something, and I want it, ask him, and he’ll give it to me.

Well, on one of our last visits, I did just that, and the “giving” didn’t actually take place.

I asked him for something and he would look at it and ponder its signifiganice in his life and the say “…well…I don’t know…I’d like to hold on to this.”

He would then ask if I wanted 5 rolls of duct tape or an old rusty rake ( I took one roll of tape and politely refused the rake).

There is this unspoken knowledge that exists within the entire family where we realize that someone is going to have to take or to dispose of most of my fathers “stuff”.

Over the past several months, in preparation for the baby, I have done a fine job of clearing out the apartment of my life of “stuff”.

I can’t imagine nor would I want to bring into my life all of his stuff.

So, I too must consider what to keep and what to discard.

And, in this process, I must decide what to keep about my father and what I shall let slide down my memory hole.

The Cold Room – Lowry Pei

Lowry Pei – Birthday?? – Grew up in the 50s.

I venture into my own cold room quite a bit.

Sometimes I think that I spend too much time there.

My cold room isn’t necessarily filled with the corpses of memories. I think that they are just in hibernation and each time I visit them, they return to life and I am able to spend some time with them again.

Then again, I’m happy to have the ability to still pull those memories from the recesses of my mind. Who knows how long they will remain. I know as I age, I’ll loose the ability to find them in their normal resting places.

When I crack the door of the cold room and step inside, I think about my days in high school. Friendships…girlfriends.

I think about my college years. Again, all the good friends I had …the couple of girlfriends I had.

I think about my time after college.

My years adrift before my time in Romania.

I think about the “friends” I had in Romania. I think about M and how we met. I think about out time together in RO. I think about our first years in this country together. I think about the innocent first couple of years we spent together…as we really grew to know each other.

I’m happy when I revisit these corpses.

But, deep in the back corner of the cold room, on a shelf, in a box are the really “dead” memories.

I know they are there, and from time to time I will lift the lid to that box and look inside and see them there. Naturally, I don’t spend too much time with them….but I respect the space they occupy on their shelf.

Rosa – Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick born April 17, 1928

If I had not read ‘The Shawl” in the BASS 1981, I don’t think that I would have had the connection to this story that the story enabled.

Having that story in my head through the time I read this really added some depth and body to the story.

Rosa is a rather long story…but worth it.

I always seem to enjoy stories that have a character who is…touched in the head.

I think if written with skill, the effect is wonderful.

Ozick certainly knows how to pull it off.

I think that part of my fascination with this particular trait in a character is my own fear or thought that I may suffer this fate someday.

I already question little mannerisms that I have and wonder how others perceive me. Little gestures, statements, behaviors and quirks. I think looking at myself from the outside, parts of who I am are a bit – well – weird…if not a little odd already. I ask myself – “why did I make that weird noise?” or “why did I screw my face up like that?”.

I have told M about these thoughts I have and she assures me that these are just traits that make us who we are. They are part of our personality.

I suppose she is correct, but I can’t seem to shake that I’m already a bit off center.

My father (in his “normal” days- Pre Alz), had an odd personality. You don’t have to stretch your thoughts too far to draw a connection between the two of us.

I just wish I wouldn’t look back on a scene in my life and be so critical of my behavior in these particular scenes.

I’m too into my own head sometimes. If the normal biological processes of my brain chemicals altering my everyday behavior as I grow older don’t push me into the looney bin – then me fretting over those brain chemicals is going to push me there quicker.

-Screwed huh?