Prowler – Elizabeth Tallent

I was happy that another story by Tallent appeared in BASS. I encountered her work twice before in BASS 1981 and BASS 1987 and I look forward to reading her again in BASS 2013.

I don’t do well with stories about divorce – predictably because my parents divorced when I was 8 and I have very vivid memories of the separation.

I’ve written several times about the divorce and I can’t help but feel that it shaped how I deal with separation to this day.

I’ve had many good colleagues leave the paper over the past several years and I have purposely avoided attending their farewell gatherings. I recognize that this is selfish of me but I also wonder if my absence is really noted. I usually justify to myself my lack of attendance with self-assurances that I won’t be missed at these functions. I’ve only been called out on this a couple of times and only once did it end in an uncomfortable conversation.

This story serves again as one that takes me down a road of memories – many of them uncomfortable – and allows me to look at my life today and ponder the direction my life might have taken if the divorce never happened.

I am here now – happy in this world. And that matters.

The Reverse Bug – Lore Segal

This was a difficult story for me. I know when I am not capable of justly writing about a story – a story that is too complex for me to truly understand and appreciate. So many others have paid the proper respect this story deserves and I encourage you to seek out their opinion of the story.

I enjoyed reading Lore’s notes at the end of the BASS concerning the creation of the story and how various bits and pieces of the story were in her head for decades. In one online interview Lore states that the idea for the “Reverse Bug” was something she carried around with her for fifty years.

Fifty years.

I think that’s wonderful. A writer that was finally able to get that idea down on paper – and communicate it through such a deep and fascinating story.

It gives one hope that there are conclusions to quests – sometimes weeks, months or years later. 

Typical - Padgett Powell

Picking up BASS again and attempting to inject some life into this project and doing so with encountering Padgett Powell for the first time almost killed the desire in the first several minutes of reading Typical.

You see, I think my mind has lost a great deal of tolerance for literature.

I started my entries on the BASS 1990 on September 11, 2013  and read my first story from that collection and posted my thoughts on the 16^th of that month.

Here it is now November 22, 2016 and I’m still carrying around this book and still writing about how I’m struggling to get through it.

3 years 2 months 11 days later.

I had a pretty good run with the BASS series up until now but my lack of reading…these stories…has caused damage to my lit-mind.

I’ve read plenty over these past three years – but these short stories kept me flexible – nimble. That’s all gone now and was doubly reinforced when reading Typical.

You see, I think I would have consumed and digested the story differently with my old mind. But – we read the stories when we read them – and that too lends to their interpretation.

I enjoyed this story.

Today.

I’m glad I pushed forward past my desire to toss the book aside once again.

This story was the right story to pull me back in and to (at least I feel it has) reignite this project. I wrote a couple of entries ago back in May that I thought the story I had just read would be the one to pull me back in – obviously it wasn’t.

One last thing – I really enjoyed reading Powell’s Contributors’ Notes. He wrote at length on the Molecular Theory of Fiction – basically his thoughts of how a story comes is created and he used Typical as the example detailing 12 origins of certain parts of his short story Typical.  A quick Google search failed to turn a discussion of the "Theory"  in any subsequent interviews or writings or its application on any other pieces of his work. 

Wigtime – Alice Munro

Of all the stories I read by Munro, this has to be my favorite.

When I lived in Negresti there were students from the town and students from the surrounding villages. At that time there weren’t buses or an organized transportation option for the students in the villages to travel to the school. Some students lived in the dorm (where I lived) and some walked over hills, some hitchhiked, and some jumped on the train that arrived in the town crazy early in the morning. I could always tell the commuter students by their shoes. The town students had cleaner shoes and the girls would wear shoes that could only be used for walking on pavement. I felt sorry for the commuter students. I knew that they came from poorer communities…water from a well – limited electricity. Their pants were spattered with dried mud from walking over the hills. I admired their dedication.

I can’t begin to imagine the other difficulties and situations they faced as they walked to and from school. Animals, cars nearly killing them, the elements and of course other people.