A Change of Season – James Bond

James Bond-???

Try finding any information about this author!

There have been countless times in my life where I have found myself in a situation where I think I could have accomplished a task better than the individual I am paired with. I’m sure too, that the individual who is dealing with me at that moment could be feeling that he/she is doing just fine and actually is doing better than I could be doing. They could also be feeling some hints of uncertainty and self doubt which would cause them to lean into the wind and work harder a the task in order to save face and prove me wrong.

I don’t have a specific example that I can summon right now, but the larger lesson that I came away from in this short story was the need for me to constantly or at least make a more concerted effort to look at situations from my counterpart’s point of view.

In my life, I have been working hard to see things in my environment not only through my eyes. In our culture/society, we have become very “me” centric.

With Facebook (which I participate in) and other forms of “look at me” media/networking, we need to remember that it’s not all about us – we aren’t always ‘right”.

One sort of decision making practice that I do follow is something that my parents raised me with and some thing that I too hope to use in my own parenting. It’s also something that was stressed to me in my (military) training and something that I do today.

When it comes to someone making a decision about their immediate future – or even their long term future, I hesitate to offer them direction. I’ll only step in or object if I feel that a shitstorm could ensue. I would prefer that they would, if one is to be made, make a mistake and learn a lesson from it. Of course, if they are successful, then they are the one to receive all the credit – and learn again from what they did. I don’t think that I am avoiding any sort of obligation or responsibility, rather I think that I am allowing growth within the person. They may not see this as the event is unfolding...but I the span of life, perhaps the lessons learned will surface and help.

A little break –

I seem to have fallen into one of my spells where I have a difficult time reading and writing for this project. I feel good enough to say now though that I seem to be coming out of it and I should be able to read more and regularly post here.

Here is my first major distraction. It’s a distraction that is more than welcome.

And here is my second. this distraction too...is wonderful.

I’d like to bring out a sentence from the conversation between David Foster Wallace and David Lipsky.

I think that at times this is why I have trouble with the stories – I have to transition between styles of writing and looking for the lessons in each story (if there are any to be found).

Wallace:

... “Because a book has to teach a reader how to read it. so the structure stuff starts right at the beginning.”

- From Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself – A Road Trip with David foster Wallace” – David Lipsky

- So, that is my latest set of excuses. Am I satisfied with them? Sure.

The Dignity of Life – Carol Bly

Carol Bly - April 16 1930 – December 21 2007

Researching Carol Bly, I discovered what a remarkable woman/writer she was. She was a powerful literary force and an overall wonderful person. It was said that she caused readers and writers to open their eyes to the realities of the situation.

Turning this story into the lesson that I am seeking from the BASS series wasn’t too hard. I am in the stage of my life now, where happily, a new life is beginning and will make a major impact on my life, but sadly, there are a couple of family members whose lives are winding down...at a speed that is very unsettling.

I’ve written in several posts about my fathers Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t think I need to tread over that ground again. I think I have also mentioned my step-fathers more recent health issues.

But, Bly has done a wonderful job at doing what she does best.

Pat (step-dad) is 88. He is old, and he’s not doing well. He has reached point in his life where things just aren’t working for him anymore. He is partially deaf, and blind in one eye. He has limited mobility, and his mental state is...well...deteriorating. Life is hard for my mother now who must wait on him 24 hours a day. Simply, she has a newborn on her hands once again.

My father is 64 - early onset Alzheimer’s. He called me yesterday on 3 separate occasions. Each call was for the same thing. Call one, I spoke to him and had a conversation about his books. Call two, I missed. Call three was a five minute voice mail from him again about his books. The voice mail was him simply asking me the same question he had asked about 4 hours earlier – just rambling on and on.

With my father and with Pat, we are working at making sure that there is still some dignity of life.

We all attempt to treat both of them the same that we always have but it can be quite stressful and sad at times.

We hold those that we love sometimes in our minds at an age that we love them the most in...or wish to remember them the best way in.

I don’t know if I phrased that correctly, but what I mean to say, is that I have trouble seeing my father as he is now. I choose to see him when he was 55. When he was able to remember what he was doing as he walked from one room to another. When he came to visit me in Romania and we took off to Italy for a week – no cares in the world.

And I remember Pat, making sauce in the kitchen, watching the fights on T.V., listening to Jazz in his Buick Regal – left arm out the window holding a cigar.

These life changes for the two of them have come on so quickly that it has caused all of us in the family to work hard at making the adjustments.

It is important for us to honor these two men and to respect them. To hold their memories and to always remember what they did for us.

Introduction – Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler - October 25, 1941

On my first pass of the Introduction, I found it rather...well...bland. So, what I’ll do now is sit the book beside me, and re-read it and pull out some lines which should be reconsidered as they can’t be called “bland”.

...”Why is it, then, that so many short stories lose their bloom in the time it takes me to store a magazine on my closet shelf? Why is it that some few do not? What makes those few any different?

Well, this is the year I found out, more or less.”

About Shannon Ravenel and her reading for The Best American Short Stories 1983 –

(Ravenel)...”read 1379 stories published in 502 issues of 154 different magazines.”

On her own selection of some of the stories to fill BASS 1983

“For one whole afternoon, I sat in the middle of a rug and rearranged tear sheets around me like so many parts of a jigsaw puzzle. Then I went off and left them. Some stories I noticed, hung on in my mind while I was busy with other tasks. Some evaporated. Some I returned to the following day and found, when I picked them up, that they sprang back whole into my memory, all of a piece, as if carved from a single block. Those were the real successes.”

And then this important line –

“Well, in the long run, this much emerged:

It seems to me that almost every really lasting story – almost, you notice- contains at least one moment of stillness that serves as a kind of pivot.”

and

“All really satisfying stories, I believe, can generally be described as spendthrift.”

...

“A spendthrift story has a strange way of seeming bigger than the sum of its part; it is stuffed full; it gives a sense of possessing further information that could be divulged if called for. Even the sparest in style implies a torrent of additional details barely suppressed, bursting through the seams.”

On the magazines the stories came from –

“I would have preferred for these twenty stories to represent twenty different magazines. It didn’t happen that way. The fact is that more good writers seem to be sending The New Yorker more good work than they send to other periodicals, and it would be unfair to all of us if I pretend otherwise. It does please me to see that without trying to, I have arrived at a fairly even balance between the sexes – nine selections by men, eleven by women – and at least half of the writers are relatively unknown.”

Are writers sending the New Yorker “more good work”, or are the writers sending the New Yorker the New Yorker style of writing...in an attempt to “be published”

Ahhh yes, that old question again.

So we go from Gardner in the previous collection, who pulled from obscure publications, to Tyler picking 8 stories from the New Yorker.

Finally –

“I like to imagine that if you set this book on a table, it would almost bounce; it would almost shout.”

About the stories –

“I am proud of them, and I am grateful to the writers who created them.”

-Anne Tyler won the Pulitzer Prize, 1989, for Breathing Lessons. Here is another case where Ravenel picks a great editor.

The relationship between the two seemed to have lasted.

WHILE ALGONQUIN Books' recently issued New Stories from the South marks the 10th anniversary of the series edited by Shannon Ravenel, the house is holding off its celebration until next April. That's when it publishes The Best of a Decade of Shannon Ravenel's New Stories from the South. And this time around, the editor is not editorial director Ravenel but Baltimore-based author Anne Tyler. And therein lies a tale.

The duo developed a close working relationship when Tyler was guest editor for the 1983 Best American Short Stories;, Ravenel edited the series, published by Houghton Mifflin, for 12 years. "I used to entertain myself by making a straw vote of the stories I would select if I were guest editor," Ravenel recalls. "Usually I was far off their selections. But with Anne Tyler I missed by only one story, so I just fell in love with her. And we really did enjoy working together, although I don't think we ever spoke by phone. Neither have we ever met in person. She's a very private person."

Summer, Bob. "Algonquin's short stories: guess." Publishers Weekly 2 Oct. 1995

And in closing a little bit about the personal qualities of Tyler that might give us an insight into the stories she picked.

Despite her status as a best-selling novelist, Anne Tyler remains a private person who rarely lets public demands interfere with her family life. She shuns most interviews, avoids talk show appearances, and prefers her home in Baltimore, Maryland, to New York City. As the author explained in an e-mail correspondence with Alden Mudge for BookPage online: "I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward." In a body of work that spans over four decades, Tyler has earned what former Detroit News reporter Bruce Cook called "a solid literary reputation ... that is based solely on the quality of her books."

"Anne Tyler." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 22 Apr. 2010.

I am really looking forward to these stories. Once again, the wonderful thing about these collections is that every year, the reader is treated to a new guiding hand. Someone to lead you down the paths created by the best writers our country has to offer.