Reading Mavis Gallant in a rainy car.

The Remission - Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant Born, August 11, 1922

I have found that with my research into the author of this short – Mavis Gallant, that I developed and appreciation of the story much more after dashing through her life bundled together for me on the net.

With my years of searching, finding, distilling out the most useful parts of a requested subject, and delivering clean material - my ability to absorb important and meaningful information happens pretty rapidly.

One of the reasons why I need to slow down when I am reading these stories – to ingest them as I would pre-Google. There is something to be said for quick absorption but a slow digestion has its merits.

Discovering Gallant has been pleasurable. Once again, Elkin presents a “longer” story and I initially found it difficult to push through this one.

I actually wrote a post concerning my difficulties with this BASS volume but I am holding onto it a bit longer so that I may continue to gauge my problems.

When I assemble these posts, my first step is usually to find a picture of the author. This allows me to get slightly closer. Look into their eyes, to imagine what they were thinking when they wrote the story. Who are they? What have they done? What will they do?

I found several shots of Gallant and included my favorite with this post and my second in the next post. Both are of her when she was a few years younger. She remarked in an online article for Slate that a more recent photo of her looked like a boiled potato. A bit harsh on herself.

I was quite taken by the above photo. Where is she? What is she looking at? And, let’s be honest - she is in short – very pretty.

After I find a photo of the author, I do some back grounding of the author. Birth date, awards, quotes.

I then write a little piece about what the story gave to me and will offer my opinion and usually end up writing a bunch of nonsense.

Again, this whole project is for me. Talking to myself.

I have found that putting it online is convenient and will give those who stumble across it a little surprise or two. (Especially a living author who Googles themselves and happens across their name associated with an old story). I often think that my children will discover it someday and know a little more about their father. Children I don’t even have.

Below are some quotes that really stood out as I looked into Gallant.

Timothy Foote called Gallant "one of the prose masters of the age," and added that no modern writer "casts a colder eye on life, on death and all the angst and eccentricity in between."

Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Ronald B. Hatch observed that the subject of children, "alone, frightened, or unloved," recurs often in Gallant's work.

Gallant told the New York Times: "I think it's true that in many, many of the things I write, someone has vanished. And it's often the father.

Foote (again) "Gallant rarely leaves helpful signs and messages that readers tend to expect of 'literature':

And it is this last observation that really stood out to me in retrospect as I assessed what “The Remission” gave me.

Within “The Remission” I found a lesson that has been presented to me in other forms in previous stories.

As much as we like to think that we are the center of the universe, the world keeps spinning... or stops spinning regardless of the influence we think we have over it. People around us, our family and loved ones, live their lives, lives that are both known to us and those that are secret. Changes occur within them that we can measure by alterations in their physical shape as well as their mental standing...but the most significant are usually the changes that occur within them that are only known to them.

We die and the world does not crumble as we disintegrate into the earth...days, weeks and years pass and finally, someday, we fail to exist even as a memory.

We have a short time on this earth. And then- we are gone forever.

Mavis gave me a needed gut-check with this story.

Score - 8 out of 10.

The One-Star Jew - David Evanier

This story took some getting used to. 

I hate that phrase.

Getting used to. I thought at one time the word was “ust”.

As in “getting ust to.”

I was under the impression that the word ust had a meaning unto itself.

Anyway, I had to look deeper into this story to find what it was attempting to teach me.

Again, I felt that this selection was an instruction into one’s place in life, a transition, as well as a discovery, of where one is positioned in the universe.

Are you Jewish? A Buddhist? A transcendentalist? An Atheist?

Can you be everything and nothing? Must you be grounded, or do you project a sense of being grounded to those you love and who you interact with our are you one who is soaring above the earth in your head...looking at the universe and all that it can become for you?

Is there a danger of not being grounded and flying too high? What is the limit?

As I’ve mentioned. I’m in a position in life where I am asking questions of myself in relation to where I stand with myself.

A spiraling circle of questions. I usually ask these questions on my runs where I spend over an hour or two or three on the road. I have plenty of time to think out there and to have an internal Q&A session with myself.

Rather than sitting still in a room concentrating on my breathing, I choose to spend my meditative moments on the road.

I like to think all of us go through life thinking about where we fit into this reality we live in, but, after working where I do, exploring what I do, I’m afraid that I believe that there is a low, dull monotone ringing across the mental landscape of a majority of my countryman’s minds. I just don’t see them thinking about themselves in a way that is as introspective as I would consider healthy for them.

I don’t need to get into a whole digression of where we are as a society an how we are now paying the price of what we have failed to see within ourselves over the past several decades. These stories will show that for me.

I just felt that this story was telling me that it was OK to settle back and constantly question where I am and where I am going.

It was a difficult story but one that provided and nice assuring lesson.

Score – 6 out of 10.

Long Calls – Frederick Busch

Frederick Busch August 1, 1941 - February 23, 2006

I have a couple of interviews open in my browser as I write this. They are interviews with the author of this selection. I am choosing not to read them before I write my piece on this story because I don’t want anything he says to contaminate what I want to write.

I did sneak a peak into one of the interviews, and it revealed that some of the discussion was going to be on the state of fiction during the time of the interview. (2005 – one year before his death)

The state of fiction is something that interest me and something that I think I have mentioned a few times in the past. I think, if I am careful, and my memory continues tio serve me that I will be able to see the different forms fiction and in particular the short story will take over the years as I read through these collections.

“Long Calls”.

This story served as a reminder that we all are worlds unto ourselves. We are and I am too guilty of this self absorption. We forget that everything that could and is going on in our lives, is simultaneously happening in someone else’s life...with a chance that it is impacting them, and those around them, with a greater degree of force than what is happening in your life at the moment.

David Foster Wallace did a nice job of illustrating this in his famous commencement speech.

I think though over the past few years, I have become better at realizing that the situation I am in now is one of relative ease and comfort. Things could be so much worse. I forget how lucky I am at times...but I do recognize that I am lucky.

Again, “Long Calls”, is a simple story giving us insight to the inner workings of a life, and the intersections, traffic, speed bumps and crashes that happen daily to people in our world.

We attempt to reach out to others, connect – heck, just survive with each other, passing along through this world, and at times we are met with characters that just are not agreeable with the current time we are in.

We need to keep in mind though that we can learn so much from everything, everybody we encounter. We need to see the signs and appreciate what others are trying to tell us. Open your eyes, and ears...your mind will follow.

Score – 7 out of 10.

The Emerald – Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989

I wrote rather recently about Barthelme and the struggles I had with him as an author...I guess I should say with his particular story that was contained in BASS 1979.

Coming across “The Emerald” as the first story within this edition of the BASS, I figured it was a sign that I needed to give him a second chance. I’ll admit that I wasn’t looking forward to reading this selection, and about ½ through the reading, I became quite discouraged and upset either with myself or with Barthelme.

It wasn’t until I finished the entire story that I realized the importance of this man. Yes, this story is only the second story of his that I have read, but this story, the form that it is in, not necessarily the message it conveys, (if one is conveyed at all) is what I found to be important here.

And, I’m not even sure if the word “form” is the correct word to use when I refer to how this story is presented.

What I am attempting to say, is that it is important to ingest a little poison from time to time. In literature, and in life.

The poison you take, either willingly or by mistake will make you sick for a moment but ultimately it will render your organism stronger once you have broken through to the “other side” and find yourself “normal”. But, your position of “normal” has been reset. You will never again be what you were before you took that poison – you are forever changed – a change that my not be at first apparent, but may emerge later in life.

When I spoke of transcending the mind in my previous posts, I had no idea that this particular story would align itself with my idea of transcendence.

I would venture to say that this particular story, at least for me, is about as close as you could get to a literary psychedelic trip. Again, I should qualify this statement and say that this thought is from my perspective

– now –

which of course will be changed forever – and I may, very will ingest, some more poison in the future that will set me back to thinking about what I think to be a transcending event.

I am not concerned with the actual message Barthelme is trying to relate to the reader. I just am taking in the free structure, the nonsense, the diction, the choice of words...how it flows together, and then dis-joints.

I’m glad that I had the chance to take this little hit of literary acid. It opened my eyes and mind to a new frontier in writing – I don’t feel that I had recognized that I had confined myself in a cage of what I thought the short story should be structured as. I need to remember that the form is quite nebulous...and I need to explore and attempt to understand all the shapes, dimensions and forms that it can be delivered.

-Sidenote- but is it really nebulous? Is there a predefined structure to the short? Who sets the rules? Why must they be followed?

As much as I like to think that I am open minded, and as much as I train myself to look at every situation from the opposite side or at least from another angle, I am a little upset with myself that I failed to see that the position of this story was strategically placed in order to set the reader up for the following shorts in the volume.

Elkin has opened the door for me (or the reader) to walk down a path of literature that I may not have recognized in previous readings of short stories. More specifically, stories from my time – the early 2000’s- through today.

The funny thing is, he is opening this door in the past (1980) and I have been stuck in the future. (Present day)

So it has taken a dead author, acting as an editor, to introduce me to another dead author, to educate me in the expansiveness of writing – 29 years in the past.

Woah.

(P.S. - Hi JESSAMYN)

Score 8 out of 10.

The Introduction

While I struggled through BASS 1978, I came across a story, that in my mind, was the finest that I had read up to that point in the anthology. It was entitled “The Conventional Wisdom” by Stanley Elkin. I gave it my normal treatment in a review...meandering sentences, dodging the actual pint of the story, and attempting to relate to the message the author was trying to impart through his writing.

I Scored it 10 out of 10.

As I stated, it was a story that would stay with me forever.

I know that I will come across others that rate as high and will probably surpass it in my rankings.

Stanley Elkin is the guest editor for BASS 1980. I feel that I have done ample research on him as an author through readings of interviews in such publications as “The Paris Review”, and listening to a couple of his interviews on “Wired for Books”, which is the Don Swaim radio interview show.

I also ran across references to meetings that JCO had with Elkin in her Journal.

The problem with doing so much research on him was that I started to construct a character Elkin and determine the types of stories he was going to select before even reading the introduction.

I suppose the best message that I received from Elkin in his introduction, was that he flatly stated that he chose the stories based on his taste. That the stories may or may not have been the “Best” but they were the “Best” according to his taste.

Well- that’s about as honest as you can get I suppose. I wouldn’t think that any of the guest editors would base their selections on much more.

I think that Elkin was fortunate enough though to come along early in the “guest editor” position and was able to get by in the introduction with almost stating the obvious. I’m not going to fault him for that in the least. It needs to be said and the reader needs to keep this in mind.

I think I also need to put something right out here before I continue writing about the introduction and the BASS of 1980.

I am intimidated by this particular collection. I have a strange feeling about the combination assembled.

There

That’s all I need to say about that.

I just wanted to get that out there. I hope that this feeling doesn’t shade my feelings about the individual writers or their works.

How could it not though?

There was a word that Elkin uses in his introduction and sometimes all it takes is a word for the mind to start churning.

Transcendence

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about transcending my mind, my consciousness, my reality. I have been looking at my behavior – everything from my dreams, my inner dialogue, my conversations with M, my selected podcast subscriptions, my running and finally, how in interpret what I am reading.

I’ll address my running first because I feel that this action is what is taking me to a “different level” of consciousness.

Simply put:

When I run, I ascend to a different level of consciousness. I know that there are all sorts of chemicals being released into my body triggered by my brain to manage what I am physically putting it through.

I run without headphones because I feel that this allows me to focus deeper on everything that I am going through. The sounds, smells, temperatures, changes in perception, etc.

An interesting thing happens though while I run. I do not “zone out”. I am hyper aware of my surroundings. At the same time, I am deep into my mind. I am solving problems, creating and discovering, and on my longest runs, this is where the most interesting things happen. I am almost guaranteed that I will hit the “High” caused by running. What I do with that “High” is what counts.

I feel that my entire outlook on life, my life, our life, has changed since I have taken on the long miles. I feel that it adds to my reading life as well.

So, as I have taken the “long miles” route in this introduction, I hope that the tastes of Elkin allow me to transcend my mind and help me along my journey.

Contents

The Emerald / Donald Barthelme

Long Calls / Frederick Busch

The One-Star Jew / David Evanier

The Remission / Mavis Gallant

Speck's Idea / Mavis Gallant

The Old Folks / William H. Gass

In Case of Survival / T. Gertler

The Faithful / Elizabeth Hardwick

The First Clean Fact / Larry Heinemann

Into the Wind / Robert Henderson

Lemon Tree / Curt Johnson

Friends / Grace Paley

Home / James Robison

Mama Tuddi Done Over / Leon Rooke

At the Anarchists' Convention / John Sayles

The Safe Deposit / Isaac Bashevis Singer

Dr. Cahn's Visit / Richard Stern

The Rags of Time / Barry Targan

The Old Forest / Peter Taylor

Gesturing / John Updike

Markowitz and the Gypsies / Norman Waksler

Hog's Heart / Gordon Weaver