Communist – Richard Ford

Even before my son was born I thought about how my parents behaved in their life when I was an infant, a baby, a child and young boy.

In what I am beginning to realize now as what was the last true/honest lucid discussion between my father and I in a motel room back in 2003, – before Alzheimer’s kicked into a degree that we could all clearly recognize, I was able to get the last few details I needed to complete the picture of what my father’s life was like as a new father and husband.

It was enough detail to solidify the pissed-off disposition I carried towards him several years before the discussion, and continue to carry today.

I’m able to keep those feelings neatly compartmentalized and draw upon the emotions they stir when I need to…but I don’t see the necessity to live daily with them in my life.

I suppose that I’ll wrestle with the damage of the divorce for the rest of my life. I’ve accepted that…soooo I’ll deal with it.

During several of our long evening walks as M and I discussed the timing and possibilities of starting a family, I’d drag out into the conversation the almost disbelief I had at my father’s behavior when he was 33-38. Now I know there are two parties involved in a divorce, and in the past I’ve said pretty much nothing about the role that my mother played in that whole affair. She factors into the decision that they made…but if I were to break it out and assign percentages of blame, I’d say it was 90% him 10% her. That measly 10% is also probably why I hardly mention her in these posts…she of course was a huge influence in my upbringing but at this time is my writing…I cannot bring her into this space – not yet.

I like to think that M and I are making better decisions and have established a better relationship than my parents had when my sister and I were young.

The relationships that the main character has in this short with the adult characters drove me to think about the future with my son and wonder about our relationship. It caused me to wonder about the relationship he will have with his mother.

It made me think about what my mother felt as she worked hard to raise my sister and I as my father spent hours and hours away from home…working.

It made me think about my mother and I after the divorce – our relationship.

The weight she carried the responsibility to care for two young children – alone.

Gossip – Frank Conroy

Frank Conroy - January 15, 1936 – April 6, 2005

Another really good short.

As Carver promised…a story to show us what it was and is like out there.

This story covers several decades but there was a particular piece that I related to.

A section of this story deals with the main character as a professor. A female student of the character/professor is a victim of some gossip linking her romantically/sexually with the professor…and there we have the storyline that I can understand.

It was difficult during my time in Romania to keep the gossip about me under control. In fact, there was no controlling it. I was able to keep the gossip concerning my romantic affairs to a minimum. Just a minimum…not completely under control.

I worked hard to make sure that I was not seen in the company of girls or women. I was careful not to be alone in classrooms with female students. Lines would be drawn and assumptions made.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, there were ample opportunities early in my time at the school where I could have established myself as man of many women…but I knew of the negative consequences associated with such a label.

Plus, I think I have a pretty realistic view of the world, and I know my place in it, and the reality of it is, that the fact that I was an American in the village only polished to a pretty decent shine what is underneath…a pretty average guy.

It was difficult for M and I to completely hide our relationship once we took that step, and we knew that tongues were wagging, but we worked our hardest to make our relationship look professional. Honestly, in retrospect, I’m pretty sure everyone knew.

Mid-summer of 2000, when the notice of our marriage appeared outside of the mayor’s office, everyone’s assumptions were proven true and our daily walks around town caused eyes to settle on us just a bit longer and the whispers and smiles to increase just a bit more.

Just as the student in this story felt the weight of the gossip, I’m sure that M and her family felt the weight of our relationship and marriage much more than I did or will probably ever know.

Star Food – Ethan Canin

Well, I suppose I should have expected that it would happen.

-Shit…I missed a story.

So here I am, plowing through 1986… coming across some really good stories, start to look up a little about the author and I’m getting pretty excited, because this is a great story and a great writer. I then read the short bio on the author in the back of The BASS and it mentions that the author had a story in the 1985 volume. Strange… I thought, I don’t remember the name, and I don’t remember looking him up several months ago when I would have written about him.

Shit…I missed one.

I skipped over a story in 1985. I’ll insert the story I missed as soon as I can find the time to red and think about it. I don’t suppose it’ll be the last time I miss a story.

One quick thing about Canin and Star Food.

I really enjoyed this story. It’s one that I am sure will kick around in my memory for a long time.

-----------------------------------------------

“It seemed you could never really know another person. I felt alone in the world, in the way that makes me aware of sound and temperature,…”

My son lies on his back, on our bed, furiously kicking his legs and I can feel his toes brushing across my chest as I lean over him with my ear pressed against his chest.

Between his sharp quick breaths I can make out the rapid beat of his heart and I swear that the swish I hear is the blood being pushed through that powerful little muscle.

He pauses for a moment, his feet pressed up against my chest, his breathing stopped, as I assign the thought to him, “Dad…what are you doing to me?”

The pause lasts about 2 seconds and the swift kicking and rapid breathing begins again and I support myself above him looking deep into his eyes…forcing him to look into my eyes.

I know the power I have to force him to return my stare will be over in a matter of months when he has the strength to flip onto his back and turn and twist away from me.

When he has the ability to crawl away from me, to walk away from me, to run away from me and finally to drive away from me.

M and I laugh at the swift almost constant kicking he does but we know that once he becomes vertical…

I look into my little sons eyes quite a bit. I know what I am doing. I am attempting to see into the future. I want to know what we will talk about in the future. Will we talk? Will he have questions? Will I have the answers to his questions?

When I read these stories in the BASS, stories of sons and fathers, stories of mothers and sons, stories of families…I can’t help but also think about how I would have received these stories two years ago when having a son wasn’t even on the table.

It’s stories like Star Food that really serve what this whole exercise is about for me.

Again…from Carver’s introduction:

I hope people will read these stories for pleasure and amusement, for solace, courage – for whatever reasons people turn to literature – and will find in them something that will not just show us how we live now (though a writer could do worse than set his sights on this goal), but something else as well: a sense of union maybe, an aesthetic feeling of correctness, nothing less, really, than beauty given form and made visible in the incomparable way only short stories can do. I hope readers will find themselves interested and maybe even moved from time to time by what they find herein. Because if short story writing, along with the reading of short stories, doesn’t have to do with any of these matters, then what is it we are all doing, what is it we are about, pray tell? And why are we gathered here?"

You see, here I find myself once again struggling to know it all…to know everything about my son…now and in the days that haven’t even arrived.

But Canin writes:

“It seemed you could never really know another person. I felt alone in the world, in the way that makes me aware of sound and temperature,…”

And I felt a bit of that as I pulled my ear away from my son’s chest. An act later analyzed by me as an attempt to learn and glimpse into his soul.

It's Official - I'm Crazy.

I have a strange need to gather and organize data.

As you can see on my sidebar I have a few databases which list the contents of The Best American Short Stories and Glimmer Train magazine.

Now, I have now initiated my largest and possibly longest project yet.

I'm going to tackle the fiction published in The New Yorker. I've done the math and this could take well over a year IF I am able to make 30 entries into the sheet a day.

I had to recalculate my completion date after I discovered that in earlier issues there is no table of contents AND there are several pieces of fiction per issue.

I am working backwards from 2011 and I have completed through January 2008. I've only been at it a few days so I am satisfied with my progress so far.

Here is a screen shot of my sheet - I don't plan on making this public on Google Docs until it is complete...and then I will ask for help in pointing out errors and missed stories.

You can click on the image to see a slightly larger picture.

The Convict – James Lee Burke

It’s tough sometime to do the right thing. Burke illustrates that point beautifully in this short and Carver sticks to his words from his introduction:

... I lean towards realistic, “life-like” characters – that is to say, people – in realistically detailed situations.”

“I deliberately tried to pick stories that rendered, in a more or less straightforward manner, what it’s like out there. I wanted the stories I selected to throw some light on what it is that makes us and keeps us, often against great odds, recognizably human.”

Back in 2002, M and I were placed in a situation where we, as a couple, had to make a decision…the right decision and in doing so; we assume we caused a family to flee the country.

As I sit here and write this, it seems so long ago. I can clearly picture our old apartment, the smells, the light and the tension of that day.

I worked hard after returning to America to help M adjust to life in the States. I thought that she would enjoy meeting others from Romania. I encouraged her to seek out Romanians in the area and to set up meetings with them where she could…well… discuss life.

I didn’t fully realize that M was doing a fine job adjusting to life here, and that meeting other Romanians was probably the last thing she wanted to do. That was her old life. She was fully committed to embracing America…and doing it her way, and that way did not include involving others from her old homeland.

Sometime in mid- 2001 we met a couple of Romanian families. One family lived in our city and the other in the city across the water. The husbands of both families were in the Navy. Both families came to the States in the late 1990s. Soon after arrival, they joined the Navy as a way to – make money – to support their families, to have children and to have healthcare and housing for their wives and children.

Think long and hard back to the late 1990s. Life was VERY different then. The world was relatively peaceful. Life in the Navy wasn’t too taxing. Sure, you may be stationed aboard a ship – but it’s the Navy…what did you expect?

September of 2001 pretty much changed all that.

Our new Romanian friends shared all the worries that most of us had after the attacks.

The husband in one of the families was due to get out of the Navy in a few months. He had no intention of re-enlisting. He saw what was on the horizon and knew that his life would be severely altered if he remained in the service.

Now the other husband had a bit more time to serve. He also had a 1 year old American born daughter and a wife who during her husband’s previous routine 3 month deployment was pretty much housebound due to fear and depression. M and I assisted her in her shopping and errand running while her husband was gone. We even included her in some of our larger family celebrations.

The War in Afghanistan begins and this husband’s ship receives no orders to deploy. The family breathes a sigh of relief. The months in 2002 march along and we see that things start to get interesting in Iraq. I think it was pretty clear to everyone that we would soon be involved in a conflict in that country as well.

We meet the family one weekend evening and the husband and wife are looking pretty washed out. They sit in our apartment…on our futon/sofa and begin to tell us of a plan that they are hatching.

Quickly, it seems obvious to M and I that they are desperate. The husband has received orders that his ship is to deploy for an unspecified amount of time in several days. We can sense that there has been much tension in their house.

Our “friends” ask M and I to be accomplices in a plan to keep the husband from having to leave.

They were going to lie to the Navy and hide.

M and I are asked to hide and shelter the wife and daughter while the husband tells his superiors that his wife has run away and left him alone to care for his “sick” daughter.

Husband hoped that the Navy would see that there was no one to take care of the child and that the husband would have to remain in the States.

When we were presented with this plan, I think I was the first to pipe up and shoot them down…pretty much without hesitation.

My answer to them was followed with several minutes of them pleading and even a few tears from the wife.

We explained our reasons further…(as if we really needed to) and our meeting ended shortly thereafter.

As they were leaving, we asked what they were going to do. The husband couldn’t give us an answer but he said that there was no way he was going to deploy.

The following weekend, M and I drove into their neighborhood for a little drive-by of their apartment.

I suppose we weren’t too shocked to see that the window shades to their apartment were wide open, and that the apartment was bare. Absolutely empty. Just days after our last meeting.

We never found out what happened to that family. We could only assume that they ran to Romania. I’m sure that the husband’s name appears on some sort of watch-list as a deserter. Their baby…well, she was an American citizen. Perhaps she is now a Romanian citizen.

M and I did the right thing. We had to protect our future. It was tough to face that family, in an obvious state of need and panic and tell them that we could not help them.

So, Carver in picking this story by Burke in fact did offer the reader a true picture of what life is like. Burke had his convict…and I suppose we saw three sitting on our futon one evening back in 2002.

Janus – Ann Beattie

I’d say over the past couple of years, I have done a pretty decent job of realizing that there are certain things in this world that I can live without.

I have desires for material objects and I have spent decent money acquiring those objects – and after those objects come into my possession - I realize that, the chase was better than the catch.

More often than not, those objects I chased after were books, and most recently, the books that would allow me to round out my collection of “The Best American Short Stories”.

I felt the books out in the world calling to me, begging me to add them to my collection.

When I started this reading project, the holes in my collection were large. I scoured ebay, Better World Books, Amazon and Thrift Books. I found volumes in every corner of the country. I waited patiently each paycheck to pull a little out to purchase the next volume on my target list.

I knew at some point that I would reach an end point to my collection…and when I did, when the last volume arrived in the mail, it stung.

My collection was beautiful yes…but it was complete.

Or was it?

There were years before 1978 that the BASS was published (under a different editor)…and those years began calling to me just as the books for my project did.

I work hard at not looking for these books.

They are out there, waiting to be purchased.

But as Beattie tells us – we can’t always have what we desire.

Knowing me – I’ll get those books – someday.

Gryphon – Charles Baxter

“She was right,” I yelled. “She was always right! She told the truth!” Other kids were whooping. “You were just scared, that’s all!”

Just a great little story. With the bump of Barthelme out of the way, if this story is any indication of future selections from Carver, I’ll be very pleased with this collection.

Having a son, and thinking about his future, and placing him as a character in this story, I wondered if his little mind would turn and process experiences in his life as the boys in this story do.

As my son and I take our nightly walk up one side of the street and down the other, I find myself telling him my hopes and fears for his future. My son rides in a little front carrier strapped to my chest. His head is at the level where I can whisper and he can hear me quite clearly.

I wonder if my father ever did the same.

Most of the time, I know - rather than wonder -and I am confident that my father did not whisper into my ear as I do with my son.

My father was too busy whispering into his own ear.

I tell my son that I want to be the Miss Ferenczi of this story and that I want to tell him of Gryphons and meat eating plants.

I want to tell him of things that he won’t be taught in school. I want him to question math and science and everything that he is told…and to discover truths on his own.

Does 2+2=5?

I want him to seek out resources that will challenge conventional thought. To read and listen to books and people who do not look at the world through the eyes of …us all.

I want him to find the joy and fall in love with the written word.

I want him to step through he looking glass and not be afraid of what exists there…I want him to be comfortable there.

On our nightly walks, as the days grow longer and it stays lighter longer, and the birds chip louder and the light pulls back the shadows, I can see my son’s eyes catching and focusing on new objects of interest to him.

Trees beginning to develop leaves – nature he has never seen before. White Pear trees, pink blooming Cherry trees, white and pink Dogwoods, bright red Japanese Maples, red, white purple and yellow tulips, florescent green grass and fresh yellows on the bushes. I can see his eyes accepting these images and his mind attempting to digest these new forms.

I want to give him a life, and to teach him ways to be able to discover the world each day anew.

And so, with this story, Baxter has given me a real gift. He emphasized the importance of my future…and my son’s future. And in doing so, drew me even closer to him.