Resurrectio

(or Welcome Back)

It's been a long time and instead of burying myself under a mountain of platitudes or attempts to recreate the two years of 'reading past," I shall forge ahead instead.

You've been forewarned!

~~J

Four Summer Reads:

("Reading by the Brook" Winslow Homer 1879)

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Started about a week BEFORE seeing Midnight in Paris, but was able to appreciate the movie 100 times more because I was in the middle of reading it. I didn't realize it had been fifty years since headlines across the country looked like THIS. Either way, these coincidences have pushed me into reading this American master of story. (I think)

The Orphan Sister by Gwendolen Gross

You can read a lot of my thoughts about this book if you click on the link. I wrote about it exclusively at my "Student" blog.

Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven by Karen Salyer McElmurray

The prose is dense, something I expected because I know Karen (not only is she one of my current professors, she is also my Thesis Advisor). This is her first novel, and I really like the structure of it. In place of "chapters" each character has sections told in years and dates. The first few sections match up perfectly with the last section. Very chilling.

Uncensored by Joyce Carol Oates

Because this is a book of critical essays, I only focused on the ones that deal with novels/stories I have read. It is interesting to see what JCO honed in on concerning Sylvia Plath, Richard Yates, Alice Sebold, and Emily Brontë. She also writes about the short story, the form I work with--in two essays. When I'm more familiar with some of her other topics, I will revisit this book.

Jesus & Peacocks

(Flannery's typewriter at Andalusia, March 2010)

Introduction: This semester I am taking a Flannery O’Connor literature class, and I plan to comment on all of the stories I read. We are also reading her two novels, and if I finish the stories we aren't reading for class on my own, I will be able to say that I've read all of her work. (January 2011)

PROGRESS:

Novels Read: Wise Blood, and The Violent Bear It Away

From her MFA Thesis:
"The Crop" **
"The Turkey"

From A Good Man is Hard to Find:
"A Stroke of Good Fortune" **
"A Good Man is Hard to Find"
"A Late Encounter with the Enemy" **
"The Life You Save May be Your Own"
"The River"
"A Circle in the Fire"
"The Displaced Person"
"A Temple of the Holy Ghost" **
"The Artificial Nigger"
"Good Country People"

From Everything That Rises Must Converge:
"Everything That Rises Must Converge"
"Greenleaf" **
"A View of the Woods"
"The Comforts of Home" **
"The Lame Shall Enter First"
"The Enduring Chill"
"Parker's Back" **
"Revelation"
"Judgement Day"

In The Complete Stories:
"The Patridge Family" **
"Why Do the Heathen Rage?" **

Revised for her Novels:(I haven't read these yet)
"The Peeler" (WB)
"The Heart of the Park" (WB)
"Enoch and the Gorilla" (WB)
"You Can't be Any Poorer Than Dead" (TVBA)

...So that is that. Maybe I will "revisit" the stories I really loved...but for now they only get **.

~~J

Left Behind.

Obviously this part of my blogging life ended somewhere before I began my graduate work, which saddens me because I read several lovely short stories in my first semester and I may still try to revisit them (blog about them) here.

But now, just to get "caught up" and make room for the "new stuff" I am going to take parts of what is currently on my side bar and turn them into "entries."

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

"The Bridal Party" (12/29/09)
"Our Trip Abroad" (12/30/09)
"The Hotel Child" (1/01/10)
"The Swimmers" (1/01/10)
"The Sensible Thing" (01/09/10)
"The Ice Palace" 01/13/10
"Winter Dreams" 01/20/10
"Head and Shoulders" 01/24/10
"Absolution" 02/11/10
"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" 03/01/10
"A New Leaf" 03/06/10
"Outside the Cabinet-Maker's" 03/14/10
----------------
(his essays)
"The Crack-Up"
"Pasting It Together"
"Handle with Care" 01/3/10

This blog contains my musings about all of the aforementioned stories and you can "find" them quickly by clicking on the label "f.scott"...

~~J

from The Oxford American:

(Flower Drip / Mel Kadel)

I have a "wealth" of stories readily available to me via all the back issues of the Oxford American I own.

The ironic thing is, I still can't find the ONE story I fell in love with years ago. I am 99.9% sure I have lost that particular issue. I couldn't tell you the author or the title or anything important like that about it. I'm starting to forget what it was about, even. *Update--I may have finally found the answer*

So all four of these recently read stories are different--but they are all written by women and feature female protagonists. I'll discuss them in order of preference:

STEPHANIE POWELL WATTS
"Unassigned Territory" (Issue 32, Winter 2006)

"In the rural South, some folks don't appreciate a Jehovah's Witness at the door." This is the little blurb provided by the OA. Didn't really appeal to me--but then you get to the story and a line is written below the title, "It is no small thing to give someone hope."

Okay, I'm warming up a bit. I dive in and follow two young (24 & 18) women on a mission as they hand out magazines and go through a "deliverance of woods, creeks, and black snakes" which is a territory only worked once a year (if it's lucky).

Leslie is the older, perfect example of Witness while Steph is still making her way--she also sticks out because she belongs to one of the two black families in their religious community. "Imagine the odds of seeing a black Jehovah's Witness in the territory. That's Lotto odds."

At the last stop of the day, the two have an encounter with Phyllis in the small house with the red tin roof. Although brief the humanity found there has a huge impact on Steph. It is subtle enough that Leslie is blind to it. Interesting how that works, huh?

BARB JOHNSON "The Invitation" (Issue 66, Southern Lit 2009)

I don't know how to talk about this story--none of my words seem important enough to capture the story of Maggie & Delia and their group of interesting friends in a poor Louisiana parrish. They story opens with a dream...delicious with seduction:

"One leg is up over the worn arm, facing east. One leg down on the seat, facing west. The wide-open geography of this pose makes me fidget. It steals my words and fills me with an anxious yearning."

Life centers around the laundromat, it centers around the couple at the cusp of their 20th Anniversary together. But the fear of jinxing it weighs heavily on Delia and purposefully forgets to send out the invitations for the big party.

"There's real trouble in the world. The kind that can't be fixed. Love is not trouble. It is all we have to light our days, to bring music to the time we've been given."

The world of the story has real trouble. It also has love. It is a masterpiece, suitable for framing.

MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN
"The Right Company" (Issue 68, Food 2010)

"A ravenouse food critic might be the best companion you'll find in a quiet town." Har har har. Not exactly. We get to read the story of our narrator post-divorce, although snippets from her previous life filtered in.

Eastern North Carolina is the tasty place filled with three types of ham and three types of grits served every morning at Ella's. It's the local diner, with local charm:

"The linoleum floor peeled underneath the chair legs. An air-conditioning unit hummed and dripped in the corner window. There was a display of Lance snack good next to the counter tha tno one ever bought from, though the honey-bun package said BAKERY FRESH!"

You're there. This place. The details give the story an electric charge. And despite all of this overt beauty, the real heart of the piece lies within the heart of her:

"When I was younger, I would put my ears, then my mouth, against the glass walls of aquariums. I would speak to the whales, the sharks, the translucent squid. Remember me."

HANNAH PITTARD
"Rabies Do Not Talk of Love" (Issue 57, 2007)

Highly strange prose, missing nouns and qualifiers--we get to join sisters in a nightly, almost secret society meeting as they run wild outside and act like wild animals (complete with biting).

Girls acting like boys. This I loved. The special language between two sister-best-friends, also was a plus.
-----------

~~J

"Why Do the Heathen Rage?"

(The Complete Stories, 1971)

I didn't know anything about Flannery O'Connor's story when I picked it today. I needed something relatively short because I had a full day ahead of me. Now I've done a little research and have found out that this story is considered a fragment of an unfinished novel of the same name.

This makes me feel better, because I thought the story just stopped at what could be considered the beginning. I enjoyed the pace before it stopped. A man comes home after having spent two weeks in the hospital after a stroke. We are introduced to his wife and two adult children.

Mary Maud at 30, is a teacher and has a demanding presence.

Walter, 28, is more of a free spirit--"He had the air of a person who is waiting for some big event and can't start any work because it would be interrupted."

Walter has a conversation with his mother about the farm/land and how he will now be in charge of it all--expected to take over and run the place now. Walter will have nothing of it. In fact, he gives his mother the best compliment (which is lost on her):

"Lady, you're coming into your own. You were born to take over. If the old man had had his stroke ten years ago, we'd all be better off. You could have run a wagon train through the Bad Lands. You could stop a mob..."

He's a reader. He writes letters. (he almost reminds me of Flannery).

According to a book review in the NYT, in the 378 pages of the unfinished novel, there are 17 drafts of a porch scene. I wonder if it is the porch scene included in this story. I guess I'll have the opportunity to find out soon enough.

~~J

"That Tree"

(Flowering Judas and Other Stories, 1940)

(at Andalusia, March 2010)

Katherine Anne Porter begins her story by holding up the main character's dream of being a "cheerful bum lying under a tree in a good climate writing poetry."

Then she smashes that ideal, even though he knew "his poetry was no good"...his yearning for the lifestyle of an artist in a foreign land (Mexico) was considered ridiculous by his first wife, Miriam, so when she finally leaves him he becomes a journalist just to spite her.

We're nearly half-way into the piece before we find out that "the journalist" is sitting in a cafe' where the most "utterly humiliating moment of his whole blighted life" occurred. Not to give too much away, but Miriam had decided to hide under a table instead of hiding behind her man when a precarious situation presented itself.

...but she had no intention of wasting her life flattering male vanity. 'Why should I trust you in anything?' she asked. 'What reason have you given me to trust you?'

The musing and remembering continues until the story between the two has been revealed. End scene....I was searching around to see what others have written about this particular story. I didn't find too much.

The only other story I've read by Katherine was "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," which had a similar looking back theme. I adored that story--so much so that I wrote two separate papers on it for two separate classes.

I don't know whether or not to like Miriam or the ending. Shouldn't we all be able to follow our dreams? I didn't think the poetry thing was too far fetched. But I would say that.

~~J