Finished!!! – The Best American Stories 1985

The Best American Stories 1985

Start date – Sept 10 2010

Finish date – March 4 2011

So, in closing, here is the breakdown for BASS 1985

It took -

5 months 22 days

or

25 weeks

or

175 days

or

125 week days

Which works out to:

One story every – 8.75 days

Gender profile of the anthology - 10 men and 10 women. (hummm – suspicious)

Stories from representing certain magazines more than once. – The Missouri Review – 2, The Paris Review – 2, Atlantic Monthly – 3, The Virginia Quarterly Review – 2, Esquire - 2.

Wow, almost 6 months to complete this anthology. Well, I suppose that “life” had a little bit to do with this. I will forever associate this volume of the series with the birth of my son. Even with this wonderful association, this volume was a hard read. I was so distracted by everything, and there really weren’t stories to pull me through.

There were standouts –

“The Sudden Trees”, “You’ve come a Long Way Mickey Mouse”, “Fellow Creatures” and “Angela”.

I couldn’t synch up my reading with my drive to write about a particular story. I finished several other novels as I struggled through this volume – most notably, Resurrection by Tolstoy.

Now that I’ve entered into a new phase of my life…a new chapter…a new segment, I’m ready to attack the next volume with vigor.

Bring on 1986...PLEASE!

The Skater - Joy Williams

There is a huge difference between being told that you must somewhere and you making the decision to go someplace. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve lived a fortunate life in this regard.

Under the shelter of my parents, they were pretty liberal in allowing me to make my own decisions…and of course…allowing me to live with the repercussions.

It was my choosing to attend a university pretty far from home.

It was my choice to live in New Jersey after graduation.

It was my choice to move to Romania when I did and to return to America (with a wife) when I did.

And it is our choice to live the life we live under the circumstances we have created for ourselves.

The Johnstown Polka - Sharon Sheehe Stark

It’s not too often that I appreciate a story that’s written in a dialect. This story is an exception though. Although I will say that that fact that it was written in a dialect that I enjoyed reading, I focused more on reading in that dialect than getting anything aout of the story.

If I came away with anything, I would have to say that it would be this.

Someone always has had it worse than you. Be thankful for what you have…no matter how profound you feel your loss is.

Lily – Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley - September 26, 1949

One of the first things that I stressed to M when we started dating YEARS ago was the importance of clear and open communication within our relationship. When we had disagreements, I encouraged her to confront me, and I wanted us to discuss our problems or feelings as soon as they surfaced. I hope that I am remembering correctly, that when I proposed this free flow pathway of discussion that it caught her a bit off guard. I don’t think that she was ever in a relationship (a friendship or dating) similar to the one that she had just entered into.

No that we have been married for many years now, I never have to prompt her for any sort of dialogue…not do I feel any need to hold any of my feelings back. Sure, at the beginning of our marriage there were a couple of cases where we had to remind each other that we had to talk things through right away. We knew that it was never healthy to let things sit and fester.

Of course we’ve has some disagreements and arguments…but we’ve taken the time to work them out in a healthy manner.

As we’ve grown and as our family has grown, the need for communication has grown ever more important. Our feelings about growing our family – the decision when to have children all involved a great deal of open and honest discussion. Now, we are presented with all sorts of situations where we have certain anxieties that arise, whether it has to do with the baby, a job, lack of money…anything – the need to get it on the table in a speedy manner is paramount.

The Gittel - Marjorie Sandor

I wondered if it would happen. I never thought that it would be so dramatic though.

I always thought that I had a decent sense of how to view the world through characters in a book. I thought I had a pretty solid sense of right and wrong. That I had a good solid level of compassion and love. I knew the suffering of women…of races other than my own. I thought that I could place myself into characters heads and really see where they were within a story. I thought I possessed that skill for years. At least the amount of time that I really considered myself to be a reader.

All that is over now.

The way I read a majority of my stories has forever been changed…and will continue to change.

You see, prior to the birth of my son, I read stories as a man. A man of a certain age, race and within a certain social structure…dictated by my finances and culture…you get what I’m saying.

Now, it’s as if all that has been thrown upon the rocks. Maybe I shouldn’t be that dramatic.

Maybe I should consider what has happened to be an enhancement.

Since the birth of my son, really, the way I approach these stories has changed. I think I can still draw a lot from my past and use the stories to discover who I am, but now, I am reading them as a father…not as the man that I described above.

As the man above, but enhanced as a father.

I think that it rounds me off rather nicely. And, as I grow into fatherhood, and as my son grows, and I learn from him, my perceptions and the messages the stories convey and the lessons they teach, and the pasts that they open up and explain… these stories will no doubt shift.

For example, this story. “The Gittel”.

Last summer, I really don’t know how I would have interpreted it. I would have read it as a soon-to-be father. I didn’t have the capacity to feel the emotions that I do now as I read it. Now as a father, I see it though different eyes. I feel the story with a different heart. I know the pains and joys of a father and a husband. And knowing that these feeling will evolve, I imagine that if I read this story 3 years from now, it would have a completely different impact.

Now, this causes me to wonder, will there be a perceptible shift in my thoughts as I write about these stories. Will my writings from a couple of years ago be something completely different than what I write now? Will this journal forever be changed?

Stories about children in the Holocaust, a war, or murdered. Parents fighting and how a child feels this. Families in crisis.

It will all be new to me.

An adjustment – realignment.

I suppose it’s an evolution.

I have grown into a new position in life. And I fully believe that when I began this exercise in reading and writing, that I was at the point in my life where I was ready to engage in such an “experiment”.

There has been a huge pause in my readings of these collections. I have been reading…just not The BASS.

I think that my writers shadow (the being that exists within me that is a reader and writer) has purposely taken a pause…allowing me to digest my new situation in life, and my ability to read and write about these stories will and I feel is returning.

For example, I have read a total of 7 stories from this edition since October. 7 stories in 4 months. That’s about the pace I had when I first started.

I think it’s time to get back to reading and writing. I have a purpose in this life, and these stories play a major role in discovering that purpose…allowing me to discover myself.

And now to discover myself as a father.

Secrets - Deborah Seabrooke

It took a little while for me to get into this story, and as I type this I am conflicted as to whether or not I really enjoyed it. I mean, we have here another story where a character (main) is dealing with the infidelities of one of their parents.

Sure it’s the 1980s and we are still discovering that in the 80s, divorcing and having affairs “was the thing to do”.

It was really until the last 3 or 4 pages that the story presented itself to me differently…as a story of a girl discovering the reality that she is living in.

Why do I see this?

I suppose it has to do with the fish in the hatchery the girl references throughout the story.

The camouflaged brown bass swimming together in their tank, and their “reveal” when they break the surface looking for food from a visitor.

As I read this story, I thought about my own father and his secrets. I’m sure he holds many, but as Alzheimer’s erodes his memory, those secrets will fade away.

I suppose that could be a good thing. There are secrets that we should never know. I’m not sure what secrets he could hold that would really shock me though. I think there is enough separation between us now and I have confronted him on the issues that may have upset me…so I am secure in the knowledge that the secrets he is loosing are not all that important.

I imagine that someday there will be someone in my life that will be looking at the pool of water that is my life and at the swimming fish wondering what they hold…and what will be revealed if one of those fish surfaces for food.

I’m afraid that they will not be pleased with what lies below the surface. They will not see beautiful fish.

Instruments of Seduction - Norman Rush

Norman Rush - October 24, 1933

Expectations---

I’ve sat on writing about this story for sometime now. I simply didn’t know what it was try to tell me.

Until this morning…

As the seductress in Rush’s story expected certain things from the men that she seduced I find myself all too often living my life expecting things from…well…life.

I feel that expecting things from life sets you up for disappointment.

We expect to find a job after college.

We expect to earn good money at that job because of our degree.

We expect that with our success, we will find a mate.

We expect that with that mate we will start a family.

We expect that family to run like a well oiled machine.

We expect that with a successful job, stable home life that our future can only be bright and rosy.

And sometimes, this causes us to never expect bad things to befall us.

But if we don’t expect certain things, does that force us to live a life of mediocrity or force us to not strive to greater heights? Do we just accept the ebb and flow of life and let the often rising waters of “bad things” drown us? Do we accept what happens to us as fate?

I think I need to find a happy medium between expectations and the unseen hand of “life”.

I knew that after my son was born that the majority of control that I like to have over my life would disappear. He would throw so many variables into the equations of events that it would be impossible for me to calculate how I could exert my control over events.

I am still learning to let go of some of that control and let go of expectations.

In the case of his birth, the expectations I envisioned of my life after his birth have been exceeded.

I never could have imagined the range of emotions that have saturated my life over these past three months.

So as I continue to live, and as I raise my son, I will learn, and he will in turn, unknowingly teach me how to flow within this world.