The Concert Party – Mavis Gallant

Let me first apologize to all the Mavis Gallant fans out there.

 

I’m sorry.  I’m sorry that I just can’t get into Mavis.

No matter how hard I’ve tried.  No matter how hard I’ve tried - not to try - and to just let the story flow into me…I just can’t get her.

And with that, it’s probably best that I say nothing more.

Edie: A Life – Harriet Doerr

More interested in the author than the story.  Happy to find that Harriet published her first novel at the age of 73 in 1983 and with that novel, she went on to win a national Book Award.

 

It’s never too late!

I found this particular story a bit dry – I didn’t really connect with it but what I took away from the experience was learning about Doerr – the author.

   

There is a rich interview with the author on the Stanford University website (she finished her degree at the age of 67) and it seems that she simply wrote about what she knew…and with that, she was discovered.

In the Contributor’s Notes section in the back of this edition of BASS, she simply states that Edie was an actual person – someone she “knew when she was young”. 

Flowers of Boredom – Rick DeMarinis

Sometimes it isn't the complete story but just a paragraph, maybe a sentence or two, that sticks in your head.

I found that with this particular story.  I didn't see one overall idea or message that I could readily pull from it (of course one could always surface later) but a nice passage below as well as part of the Contributor’s Notes will do for this entry.

“Nobody knows jack-shit,” Voss is saying to Lamar.  “If you are going to stay in this business, you’ve got to remember that.  Something else, something besides men and machines gets all this fancy work done.”

…

“I see what you mean,” Lamar says.

“No you don’t. You really don’t,” Voss says.  “What I am telling you is that there is a great dark…consensus…that sweeps things along to their inevitable conclusion.  There is an intelligence behind it, but, believe me, it’s not human.  It is the intelligence of soil, the thing that lifts trees and flowers out of the ground.  I am too astonished and thrilled to be frightened by it.”

And then in the Contributor’s notes section Demarinis writes:

“I believe thought processes are primitive.  Logic and reason mask a dark topography rutted by glaciers of superstition.  We prefer intuition over analysis.  Reason tells me smart men with blueprints and serious purpose create ICBMs.  My limited experience and my intuition tell me something else.  One of the results of this conviction is “The Flowers of Boredom.” All this happened decades ago.  It still astonishes me.”

And thinking further on this, I can take the above personally as I work in my life and in the life of my family to move away from the “dark consensus”. 

I think about it quite a bit actually and I believe that it is even more prevalent and powerful in our lives than it was when this story was written in the late 80s.

White Angel – Michael Cunningham

White Angel, presented in this collection, is another example of how this wonderful little exercise of mine presents me with authors of true quality.  Michael Cunningham went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “The Hours”.  He presents, and Margaret Atwood has presented readers with an emotionally charged story first published in The New Yorker.  In the Contributor’s Notes at the back of The BASS, Cunningham explains that the central – focal - genesis-  of this story came from an incident that happened in his home town when he was thirteen, and that it had been alive in his head for some 30 years and eventually developed into this story.

It's not that I am beginning to fear these types of stories but I do find myself becoming more anxious after reading them.  Stories when children are horribly injured, abused or killed - man, they are difficult. 

The reader knows from pretty early in the story that the main character's brother will die.

Reading of the relationship between the brothers serves as a way to strengthen the emotional punch when the brother does die.  It hurts – even though you know it’s coming.

Concerning his death and they manner of his death, perhaps this is where most of my fear comes from in these types of stories.

It is a death that comes during an ordinary moment in our lives.  Rushing towards a closed sliding glass patio door, bursting through the glass, having a shard of that glass sever the jugular and bleeding out on the living room floor.

It's horrific.

An accident. A mistake.

And you reflect on your life and remember all of the instances that you were in a position where you could have been that boy - bleeding out on the living room floor.

And then you think about your son.  How he might grow up like you.  And how he might be in situations where he would run towards that closed sliding glass patio door...and you can't sleep at night thinking about this.  And all of these awful scenes that haven't even happened in his life.  But could happen.  And are happening right now… in your imagination.

A lump forms in your throat your eyes glass over in the darkness as you set the scene so perfectly –

And you obsess over his safety. You try not to hover but he's so little, so innocent.  He needs to be protected.  But the years will pass and he will run further down the street from you...away from your protective arms. Towards that closed sliding glass patio door.  .

He’s getting older now and faster and faster and faster - always running from you - from your protective arms towards that closed sliding glass patio door.  You cry out for him to STOP!

And that’s it exactly – his life, our life – this life - a closed glass patio door.  Normally we approach it, slide it to the side and walk into the living room.  But there are moments when we – or someone we love runs through that closed sliding glass patio door. And things are never the same after that moment.

Years pass, you’re both be much older.  Your hair has grayed out completely - lying in bed - still thinking about him running towards... 

And there is no way of every catching him.  All you can do is watch.  And hope that he slides it to the side.

Parenthood.

"If you've never wept and want to, have a child." 

Incarnations of Burned Children – David Foster Wallace - of course.

Ralph the Duck – Frederick Busch

The last time I came across Frederick Busch was in October/November of 2009.

http://yearsofbass.blogspot.com/2009/11/long-calls-frederick-busch.html

 

Perhaps it’s the distance between the readings that prevented me from recognizing the genius.  Busch really is a wonderful writer. 

Ralph the Duck gets you right in the heart.  This is yet another story that due to my role as a relatively new father, is perceived completely different than I could have absorbed it 3 years ago.

I keep telling myself that the time it has taken me to arrive at the stories I am now reading is purposeful.  I am meant to read these stories in this stage of my life.

I do find myself looking back at entries in this journal and reading what I wrote, and not recognizing the man who wrote them. 

Some of the entries are very good.  Some I can tell that I dashed off just to fill in the box next to “completed”. 

It’s hard to admit that.  I need to think about what I am writing and my audience.

I was reminded of that in this story:

“You are writing it for posterity.  For some mythical reader someplace, not just me.  You’re making a statement.”

I’ve thought about eveything here and honestly, I feel the beneficiary of this exercise is me.  I’d like to think that someday W will find this and gain a bit of insight to his father.  (Yes, I’ve made backups of the whole thing).

What was it that appealed to me about this particular story?

A few things –

The main character is a security guard at a local university.  I work in a library at a local university (part-time). He has some similar opinions that I have concerning students.

The character and I are only a couple years apart in age.

He has an affinity for whiskey.  He is enrolled in a writing class.  I’m not enrolled – I’d like to be…but am not. 

He is at a university with a quarry – I have good memories from the quarry at Norwich.

He views professors with a bit of suspicion.

And finally, I think I enjoyed this story because – it’s sad.  I lean towards favoring sad stories.  Busch was known for his realistic depiction of people, families and their lives – and the sadness that they often encounter.

The main character and his wife have lost a child to death.

Again, if I had read this story three years ago, I doubt that it would have impacted me the way it did today.

I simply cannot imagine surviving the death of a child.

I do not believe that I could ever find the strength to live.

My heart is filled with such love, and to have the source of that love disappear – is unimaginable, and I can only think the unimaginable of myself when faced with that thought.