The Conventional Wisdom – Stanley Elkin

Stanley Elkin May 11, 1930 – May 31, 1995

Half way through the Best American Short Stories 1978, I find my favorite.

A story that will remain with me forever.

So...

A task that an author strives to fulfill is to take the reader to places they have never been. Both in this physical and pushing further, they take us into our own soul and force us to explore it. If our soul is in our heart, it is torn from it, if it is in our mind, it is wrapped further into it.

Furthermore, one job may be to uncover what frightens us.

What frightens many of us? Hell. Why? Because we- do -not -want –to- go- there.

Of course if we believe that Hell exists.

But what if we don’t believe. Can the author still provide a story that will frighten us in such a way that we question ourselves to our very core?

An author that can do all of this and more is nothing short of incredible.

I am going through a period in my life where I am struggling with my beliefs. Religion, society etc. I’m questioning it all.

Then again, shouldn’t we all...all the time? This is due largely to what I read and listen to through lectures. Where am I in this world? Where will I be in a year, 10 years, 20 years...tomorrow? Will I live to see tomorrow? What will happen to me if I fail to live past tomorrow? What will my life have been? Where will it go?

So, Elkin in this story, presents me with visions of Hell, descriptions that are painted so well through words that I think they are some of the most frightening I have read. I think it is the classic way he paints Hell that makes it the most frightening. I think he has found my secret definition of Hell, and illustrated it for me. It’s quite unsettling.

Elkin draws me into the story by giving his characters a humanity that we can relate to. That we can see in our bathroom mirror.

The main character is then forced into situations that we can find ourselves in, and, based on my above sentences, one of those situations is Hell.

I told my wife about reading this story and as I usually do, I failed to convey the strength of what was written.

“-it was to go mad, but there was no madness in Hell- the terrific vocabulary of the damned, their poet’s knack for rightly naming everything which was the fail-safe of reason – and he could find peace nowhere.”

Shit, bowels, spit, blisters, fire, blood, pus rape...it’s all there and in the right order.

Online bonus content can be found on the Paris Review website. A full PDF of an interview with the author. –It’s wonderful.

Look forward to hearing more about Elkin as he is the volume editor for BASS 1980.

10 out of 10

By The Yellow Lake – Peter Marsh

Peter Marsh (maybe??? MARCHAND, FIRMIN PIERRE)

I struggled to find real meaning in this story.

It just seemed to be just that...a story.

The only relation I could make to it was an attempt by the author to develop a character and have a connection with the reader by drawing them into what can only be seen as an impossible undertaking. –huh? Yeah right.

The main charater excavates sand from beneath the house of a neighbor preventing a room from sinking before an annual lakeside celebration. The scenes are painted nicely by the author...yes, just nicely. Not much more than that. I didn’t get any real meat out of this story. Characters are presented, a plot moves along, but there is no juice. Bit of a struggle to get through this one.

5 out of 10 points.

Psychopolis - Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan - June 21, 1948

A new city, strange inhabitants, friends, lovers, experiences.

The name of this story caught my attention because I could directly apply it to a town where I once lived.

Uncomfortable scenes, characters and conversations. I think we’ve all experienced those.

Finding our place in the world. We’ve all been there before.

I really felt that I was in the late 1970’s when I read this short. Words illustrated the feelings I remember as a young child observing the voices colors and shapes of that time. I really didn’t have any sort of “life experience” at that age...but I think that I had the ability to feel the atmosphere, and McEwan did a wonderful job of taking me there.

The west coast of America has always fascinated me. I don’t really have a desire to go there – even for a visit. I view it as a foreign country. I know that McEwan’s characters still live there...and with that certainty, I think I will delay my vist even more.

7 out of 10.

Murphy Jones : Pearblossom , California – Max Schott

Max Schott Feb. 12 1935

As humans we need other humans at times to buffer us from our past when it makes its way into our present.

Sometimes the past we wish to buffer has a person within it.

As that past returns to our present and just wanting to dip or toe into the tub, we call on our buffers...just so that we can feel the temperature of the water.

It’s important to have these people in our lives. At one time, in my life I actually lived with the thought that I could get by without others operating in the buffer capacity. I lived under the illusion that I could act independently when it came to dealing with life and all that it has to present...the problems.

Simply, we cannot, I cannot, and we should not.

On the surface, there is no reason why this story " Murphy Jones : Pearblossom , California" should appeal to me. That it does, is what makes it good. There wasn’t much of a struggle on first reading, and a second really brought out the highlights.

We may struggle with our pasts, but with the help of those we hold close, that struggle can be made a bit easier.

score 8 out of 10.

Main Street Morning – Natalie L.M. Petesch

Natalie L.M. Petesch

Natalie L(evin) M(aines) Petesch

Born1924 currently - 85 years old

Education: Attended Wayne State University; Boston University, B.S., 1955; Brandeis University, M.A., 1956; University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D., 1962. Avocational Interests: Residence in Spain and Mexico, Latin American literature.

A young woman (31) seeks to discover a mother.

A mother who at one time attempted to take her own life as well as that of her unborn child – the narrator.

An internal question and answer dialog. Causes of her abandonment, reasons...questions. Probing for her existence. Is she a ghost following her mother? Was she killed (aborted – hot topic in the late 1970s)?

Questions about her father.

Who was he?

A forbidden relationship, a shameful product of love. Who is he?

Feminist literature. – sigh- Sometimes I need to remind myself that these stories were written in the 1970’s. It’s just that it seems that the whole “woman/girl struggling with a child out of wedlock” theme is played out. I can’t imagine that this was something new in 1977/78 either.

Petesch presents the struggle in an interesting way but it seems like I saw the whole thing on an after school special.

I think this was the story that initially caused me to set aside this collection for awhile and move to something a bit more engaging.

Quote from Petesch:

“In nearly all my work, even in my (surreal) dystopian novel of the twenty-first century, The Leprosarium, I have tried to present characters whom I love and respect, who are wrestling with `the griefs of the ages' with love, death, and--now more than ever--Survival."

6 out of 10.

The Blacktop Champion of Ickey Honey

Robert T. Sorrells

Born September 15, 1932

University of Iowa, M.F.A., 1965.

Back in the South.

The twist in this story is first hinted at about ½ way through the reading. Knowing what is coming makes for a nice ending. I have no real interest in tennis, (part of my trouble with Infinite Jest) and if it were not for this project, I would have probably just read a couple of pages and skipped to the next story. Interestingly enough, the second reading of this story allowed me to tolerate it a bit more. There were some nice descriptions of scene and character that made a few paragraphs memorable.

I suppose that counts for something.

The spectators drinking beer and passing out from the heat/alcohol mixture on the tennis court bleachers stand out. I found it all too easy to almost taste the beer consumed by characters as they sat in the hot southern sun watching the tennis match.

The August heat in the South and how it ravaged the blacktop...I can defiantly relate to participating in athletic events during summer temperatures.

Research on the author provided several nice quotes from Sorrells.

“My father was a newspaperman, so reading the paper each morning is part of my life.”

"I guess my fiction is about the warts and wild hairs that seem to grow so naturally on the souls of the human critter. Some of my stuff seems to be about people who want--and sometimes desperately need--to love other people, but because they are awkward and don't know how, they end up hurting them (and themselves) instead. And I guess I write about memory, about people who don't want to turn loose of people--or give up on them, either. I guess I write about people who try to live their lives with some dignity and some joy. But they do stumble, they just do keep looking off somewhere else and tripping. My people are very precious to me, but they are a pretty badly bruised, stub-toed, skinned-nosed lot."

Score 7 out of 10

In the Miro District : Peter Taylor

Peter Taylor AKA - Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor

January 8, 1917 – November 2, 1994

Finally, Solotaroff brings us back to America! In America...but in a Southern State!

Those intellectual New York types...Tennessee and Europe, some sort of far away exotic land. –Right-?

Must an author create a story that is a completely foreign land for the reader to be fully engrossed in it? Is it a cheap trick to pull us in with the unknown? Surely, many readers of BASS in the late 70’s knew of the South, knew of Europe.

Taylor does a wonderful job of bringing the South to the page. It was a long slow read. Beautiful, rich descriptions, southern atmosphere dripping from each page. At times though, I found that certain emphasis on repeating certain points was a bit much.

“A bit much” ...then again the South is just that sometimes.

The story-

A battle between the generations. It’s the easy theme in this short story ( not that short...it is a New Yorker piece).

Testing limits, coming of age, understanding, failure to understand, conflict, tradition, ignorance, hypocrisy, love, morality, strength and weakness.

Finally, and what should be taken as the most important theme, shock and struggle, the transformation of a person that once was something we never knew into something that we knew was always there.

We have all been in the position where we are hiding a girl in the wardrobe. I loved this scene. The discovery of that girl and the transformation of the individual doing the hiding, as well as the change which takes place in the person who makes the discovery.

Sometimes, hiding that girl is the right thing to do. It protects loved ones. And then, when you feel the time is right, you invite them into the room to open the wardrobe and make the discovery themselves...for both of you.

With my own father in the state that he is in and what he is turning into, I often wonder if there will be a point where I don’t recognize him. He doesn’t have the ability to control the girl in the wardrobe.

I am finding that one of the most interesting aspects of writing in this journal is the research that I am doing on the authors of each of these stories. Because I am starting in ’78, some of the authors that I am learning of are either just beginning their career as a writer or have a bit of a background. It’s wonderful.

Props again to Solotaroff for including Taylor in this volume.

Peter Taylor considered on of the finest American Short Story writers. Pulitzer prize winner for fiction in 1987. Long relationship with the New Yorker. In 1979, he received the Gold Medal for the short story genre given by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Nine of his short stories were published in BASS. I can’t wait to discover the others.

Score 8 out of 10