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

"The Day Mr Prescott Died"

(published in Granata, 1956)

(Sylvia Plath)

My goal is to read at least 31 short stories this month in honor of Short Story month. The first ten I chose were from collections written by women. Now I need to "finish" my study in "gender- biased" reading and continue reading short literature by women (Egads!).

Now on to the first story I've ever read written by my favorite poet:

It was a bright day, a hot day, the day old Mr Prescott died.

She lets it all out in the very first sentence of this story, repeating the word "day" three times--which made me smile. As far as standard form is concerned, it is typically against the "rules" to do this--repetition thing. But all rules are meant to be broke, Sylvia--my rebel!

An unnamed narrator (all other characters are named) talks about the day Mr (no period) Prescott died. She isn't exactly sure how to feel because she doesn't "believe in funerals" and the deceased "was a grumpt old man even as far back" as she remembers.

The dialogue is offset by single quotation marks (double is more standard in the U.S.) and seems almost "southern" to me, even though the action takes place in Boston.

Our narrator remains cold and unaffected until after she accidently drinks from the glass that Mr Prescott was drinking brandy from when he dropped dead. Suddenly she feels sick and then has a meaningful conversation with his son, Ben:

'...you think something is dead and you're free, and then you find it sitting in your own guts laughing at you. Like I don't feel Pop has really died. He's down there somewhere inside of me, looking at what's going on. And grinning away.'

'That can be the good part,' I said, suddenly knowing that it really could. "The part you don't have to run from. You know you take it with you, and then when you go any place, it's not running away. It's just growing up.'

Ben smiled at me.

The simplicity of it all is comforting and not at all what I expected to be reading. Have you read any of her poetry? The passion is jarring--in this form she is softer.

~~J

Inventing the Abbotts

Indigo (1997)

Harper Perennial (1999)

I first became aware of this collection because of the film with the same name. Completely enamored by Liv Tyler at the time (I think this was her second role), I wanted to read where the movie came from....it was 1997.

I saw the book somewhere and picked it up--it had the movie poster tie-in cover even. I began reading the story and stopped. Then I lost the book. I found a copy of it the other day for $1.

There are eleven stories, I've managed to finish five.

"Inventing the Abbotts"
----------------------------
The longest story in the collection (30+ pages) and the one that could've been expanded into a novella and or novel. But I'm not making any judgements here, I don't like to hear "this could be a novel" at the end of my own short stories.

It remains true to itself--keeping the same narrator throughout--Doug, the younger of the two Holt brothers. They grow up as outsiders in a small Midwestern town, poorer than the Abbott family. Of course the richest part of the Abbotts lies within the three daughters. They are enough to fill the two brothers lives for a very long time.

The story reminded me a bit of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides--if only for the fascination of the sisters and the elm disease requiring most of the trees to be cut down.

"Slides"
---------
We get to read the intimate details of Georgia and David's former married life through the seven "dirty" pictures taken early in their life together. They fight for ownership of the slides after they divorce.

"While she made her argument, her hands were in constant motion; and David, lying on their expensive tweed sofa with a coffee mug resting on his chest, watched the sequence of familiar configurations, gestures she had made thousands of times before..."

Herein lies my favorite part of all of these stories. The little snapshots of relationships she seems to capture so well. Everyone knows the sequence of gestures made by someone they love. But I never really realized this until I read that passage.

"Calling"
-----------
Before the advent of cell phones or Caller ID, there was a "secret" little way to check up on someone. The hangup. I mean, or so I've heard (have you read my *69 poem?)...

Two unnamed characters are in that stage of a relationship with "what happens now?" seems to be a looming question. An unanswered question. At first he calls just to hear her voice. Then he becomes a bit possessive and jealous and the calls become more frequent:

"He called her again and let it ring on and on. He lost track of how many times he called her, but them, finally he got a busy signal. The sharp sound startled him, made his heart beat strangely. He dialed again, and got the busy signal again."

Does anyone see the end of this one coming? Keep reading, because you know you want to. Honest, true, and embarrassing moments trump predictability almost every time.

"Expensive Gifts"
---------------------
This is hands down my favorite story (read) in the collection, but I can't really tell you why. There are so many details, both visual and auditory that it all jumps off the page and becomes a living, breathing thing.

The current man: "He was standing naked in silhouette, as slim as a stiletto in the light from the hall...the sight of him gave Kate no pleasure."

The ex-husband: "...with curly brown hair and thick, wire-rimmed glasses which he removed carefully before starting to make love. They left two purplish dents like bruises on the sides of his nose."

Her sleeping son: "His hands were curled into fists, and one thumb rested near his open mouth, connected to it by a slender, almost invisible cord of saliva."

The weather: "It had been a luminous soft gray earlier, and now thick flakes, a darker gray against its gentle glow, brushed silently against the panes."

Kate: "...was, in fact, a reflexive liar. She hated to be unpleasant or contradictory, but when she felt that way, a lie, fully formed almost before she began to think about it, fell from her lips."

The details are all too rich. Too expensive. And even though it's not the "gift" the title is referencing, it is one the author has absolutely given. A bonus.

~~J

Lust (& other stories)

(Random House--Vintage Contemporaries 1989, 2000)

I came across Susan Minot two years ago through the film Evening. Then I found a short story by her tucked away in one of the literature anthologies (I keep hoarding). Sold!

"Lust"
--------
It was different for a girl.

An unnamed narrator tells the story of 16 men. They come across in snapshots and short paragraphs. There is a focus mostly on the sights and sounds--the perception of them, as she looks back on the events of her youth.

The surrender would be forgetting yourself...

The men are events. They have names (all but one)...and the details get jumbled or left out as she revisits and remembers in a stream of consciousness ode to, well, Lust--which becomes a sort of cautionary tale (sections told in second person).

They're all different...But it's like faces; you're never really surprised.
Still, you're not sure what to expect.

But she's not talking about faces here.

"The Break-up"
----------------
Meet Liz and Owen. They have been together for 8 months and seem to be living together in a small apartment in the city. It's hot. The air, the darkness, it is a Friday night in July.

Roused from their bed by a ringing phone--Liz answers and then lets Owen know that Tim is coming over.

Tim is Owen's best friend and is apparently in the throngs of a bad break-up. He's drunk and walking the streets. When he finally makes it there the snatches of a story begin about Sonia.

Sonia and Tim and there not so perfectness but "Nothing's perfect." (Thanks, Tim)

Liz listens as they sit in the dark. Owen doesn't really pay attention to the bleeding drunk heart of his best friend.

She was trying to keep him talking.
One of her theories was that people should talk all the time.

We find out that Tim was ready to propose, and he puts his anger squarely on Liz. This is how things go. After Own walks Tim out we find out that he is going to try to get Sonia back and had a warning for Owen:

"He also told me to watch out with you."

"What do you think he meant by that?"

"The Knot"
-----------
Told in four tiny sections we get to follow a couple as they are Happy (delusional), Fighting (facing reality), Apart (still mad), then finally Recovering.

Peter and Cynthia do a great job at representing a lot in just five pages. It's heavy in dialogue and realizations. It may be my favorite of the ones I've read by Susan Minot.

Sparse but filled with truth.

"The Man Who Would Not Go Away"
-------------------------------------------
Rounding out her collection, is a story that seems to happen mostly in the head of our narrator. She is not crazy, her thoughts are based on reality. She's coping. She is trying to "get over" a man.

Still, traces of him remained. At first, it was his name. I avoided the people he knew.

Very relate-able. I would say. Kinda gave me the same feeling as that episode of Sex and the City when Carrie keeps seeing Big after their first break-up. My heart was saying, "I hear ya, sister."

She seems him everywhere. Or the energy of him is everywhere. The restaurant--she feels she is sitting in the same chair she sat in one time with "the man." He materializes in other people when she goes to the movies (to escape).

When she meets a guy at a club, he happens to be a guy she only knew through "the man." So when he taps her on the shoulder she feels herself blush as she realizes who he is.

This is not what I expected. This is not what I thought he'd leave behind.

When she is finally able to find some time alone, not bombarded by the ghosts of "him" she realizes that she really never knew him at all.

My favorite lines come near the beginning of the story: Uncertainty is like a drug. It quickens the blood, wears on the nerves.

~~J

Soft Maniacs (stories)

(Simon & Schuster, 1999)

I may be cheating a bit here, or "back-blogging"...but I thought it was important to talk about the first collection of "short literature" I ever fell in love with...or can remember falling in love with...

The year was 1999 and as a wayward student at a university, when someone says, "Hey do you want to go to a reading?"...you go. It doesn't matter whether or not you know the author/spoken word mistress. You just GO! So I did.

Maggie Estep read to us from her current (at the time) collection of stories--and I was hooked... Maybe it was the "style," maybe it was the "concept," maybe it was Maggie herself.

When I found my own copy (at a used bookstore less than a month later) I was quite excited. I brought the book back to my dorm room and the next thing I remember is my group of friends and I sitting in a circle reading from it...aloud.

(We also took turns reading each other's sexual astrology from a different book, but that's another story altogether)

There are nine semi-related stories in Soft Maniacs where we get to follow two different women (Katie and Jody) as seen by the men they love/ruin...it's actually narrated by them (the men).

It's a gritty, dirty romp--a very quick read. The story I remember the most (and tell people about when I talk about the book) is "The Patient:"

"The bullet traversed my prefrontal cortex and went out my right temple, but I'm fine. I've better than I ever was, actually. They tell me I've, in effect, lobotomized myself. And I understand perfectly that this should be disastrous. I should be upset. But I'm at peace.

...Because I know, better than most, girls are trouble."

In Addition To:

(or I have to change this thing up or my head might explode)

It was a great idea: read everything ever written by a single author.

It may be the best idea ever, really (right up there with Nutella or White Chocolate Peanut Butter) BUT it takes a greater person to accomplish such a feat.

Maybe one day I will be able to say I've read all F. Scott has written, but not this year (or next year or the year after that)...

Instead I'm going to continue this blog but with a twist--I am going to include other authors. More short stories written by said authors...it will be more about the short story as a literary form.

Yay Short Stories!

This way I can include classics and "new ones" and all the stuff in between...like the sandwich I want to consume right now....I don't have the two delicious spreads mentioned above--but I'm sure I can find SOMETHING to nom nom nom.

~~J

"Outside the Cabinet-Maker's"

FROM: The Fitzgerald Reader: A Collection of His Finest Work
[1963 Scribners] Edited by Arthur Mizener, pgs. 297-301

(room in an antique dollhouse)

Originally published in The Century Magazine (1928), this one is just under 1,500 words and is the shortest "short" story by F. Scott I have read thus far. It might be his shortest even, I'd have to do research to find out if that is true.

Either way, it is charming and has nothing to do with love-lost, but instead the imagination of a little girl and the relationship between father and daughter take center stage. None of the characters are named even, so it's enchanting.

An automobile stops and out pops a lady, who disappears into a Cabinet-Maker's shop to conduct business. Revealed through the story is the reason she is there--and F. Scott even puts the key sentences in French.

(I had to look these up, and it didn't bother me one bit)

A gift for the little girl is being bargained for--and it can't cost more than "Twenty dollars." Father and daughter stay outside and construct a magical story together, while watching the people moving about the neighborhood:

“Who is the lady?”

“She’s a Witch, a friend of the Ogre’s.”

The shutter blew closed with a bang and then slowly opened again.

“That’s done by the good and bad fairies,” the man explained. “They’re invisible, but the bad fairies want to close the shutter so nobody can see in and the good ones want to open it.”

“The good fairies are winning now.”

“Yes.” He looked at the little girl. “You’re my good fairy.”

Finally the lady comes out and the Father finds out that the gift costs more than they hoped, at twenty-five dollars--but apparently it will be made anyway.

As quickly as it began, it is over. Short and very sweet. Refreshing.

~~J

"A New Leaf"

from: Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense

edited by Arp and Johnson (8th Edition, 2002)Pages 439-453

Welcome to 1931. Or at least that's when this particular story was first published in the Saturday Evening Post. I found the text in one of the used literature anthologies I seem to grab whenever they are within reach.

"A New Leaf" is in a chapter dedicated to "Evaluating Fiction." The student is instructed to pay close attention to things like plot, structure, characterization, theme, point of view, symbols, allegories, fantasy, humor, and irony (did you catch all that?).

There are even eight questions that follow to direct thoughts. Good stuff. Nevertheless, I shall ignore all the rules and opine on the story as I normally do.

By far, my favorite section of the story occurred first--opening scene as Julia spies Dick Ragland, as he briefly stops to speak to the man she is having dinner with:

She sat there, a well-behaved women of twenty-one, and discreetly trembled....

"He's without doubt the handsomest man I ever saw in my life."

"Yes, he's handsome," he agreed without enthusiasm.

"Handsome! He's an archangel, he's a mountain lion, he's something to eat. Just why didn't you introduce him?"

If I had a dollar for every time...okay. I don't think those words have ever left my mouth, but I am dying to use the line as soon as possible.

But, of course, Dick is trouble. He's not well-received. He's a drunk. Which is all the more reason for Julia to fall madly and deeply, despite the fact that he shows up both drunk and hungover for the first planned meeting.

The rest is predictable. Well, maybe not exactly--but there will be disappoint and it is rather anti-climactic, even though F. Scott throws in a bit of mystery when we hear of the final action through another character.

"Better let it all alone in the depths of her heart and the depths of the sea." Aye, aye captain.

~~J

"Bernice Bobs Her Hair"

from: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Scribners, 1989)Pages 25-47

(original artwork from the Saturday Evening Post)

Originally published in 1920, I wasn't sure what to expect from this story--I knew it was one of F. Scott's most read/discussed and just the title alone makes me think of flappers, short hair, and prohibition.

You too?

Well, it turned out to be fantastically accurate in the "game" of womanhood. (unfortunately) Think Mean Girls (or Heathers or any other coming-of-age story where the girls carve each other up).

I can't reveal the end, but it's good--and I didn't see it coming...

Marjorie made no answer but gazed pensively at her own image in the mirror.

"You're a peach to help me," continued Bernice.

Still Marjorie did not answer, and Bernice thought she had seemed too grateful.

"I know you don't like sentiment," she said timidly.

Marjorie turned to her quickly.

"Oh, I wasn't thinking about that. I was considering whether we hadn't better bob your hair."

Bernice collapsed backward upon the bed.

Oh yes, there will be scissors...especially since a boy is involved (Warren), but I am very curious about the 3,000 words F. Scott reportedly removed from the story in order to get it published.

Which makes me think of my own work and what I submitted to several creative writing programs in hopes of being accepted. This line of thinking is not related to story specifically, except for the art of editing.

I guess you just "know" what to cut and not to cut? (pun intended).

~~J

"Absolution"

FROM: The Fitzgerald Reader: A Collection of His Finest Work

[1963 Scribners] Edited by Arthur Mizener, pgs. 76-90

Forgive me F. Scott, for I have sinned. It's been....(you can check the log) since I last read you. I've been busy (not a lie) but I'm sure I couldn't squeezed a page or two in somewhere.

So they say "Absolution" (June 1924) is the false-start of The Great Gatsby. Okay. I'll go with that. I guess. I think it's a bit strange and the flashback section/repetition is maybe overdone. But what do I know, really?

I had to "look up" my Commandments because I didn't know them in proper order (because our dear boy, Rudolph Miller mentions them by number)--as in, he says he has violated the Sixth and Ninth.

Rudolph had now exhausted the minor offenses, and was approaching the sins it was agony to tell. He held his fingers against his face like bars as if to press out between them the shame in his heart.

"Of dirty words and immodest thoughts and desires," he whispered very low.

"How often?"

"I don't know."

"Once a week? Twice a week?"

"Twice a week."

"Did you yield to these desires?"

"No, Father."

While I was reading, all I could think about was a story a classmate wrote for my Fiction Writing class...involving confession and a priest. We got to hear the priest's inner-most thoughts as he say through a round with his parishioners.

Want to know the truth? I came up with the entire idea for the story.

I didn't write it, mind you--and he knocked it out of the park.

Okay. Back to F. Scott.

I don't want to give away the sin, but I will tell you that Rudolph has the best imagination and has a "character" or alter-ago with the most wonderful name: Blatchford Sarnemington.

Now I shall do my best to read you more often, my dear author.

~~J

"Head and Shoulders"

from: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Scribners, 1989)
Pages 3-24

(University of South Carolina)

Since it was the first story in my "collection" you'd think I would've started there, right? No. I'm an odd girl that way. But finally I went with the first story...so presented first probably because it was his first piece to appear in the Saturday Evening Post (February 1920).

It is obvious that F. Scott was only 24 when this was written. There is a sense of hopefulness and big dreams. It all crashes, of course--in the typical Fitzgerald way. But I love that way.

We are introduced to the "infant prodigy," Horace Tarbox and his extreme brain and deep thoughts. He has entered college at the tender age of 13 and cares more about his academic pursuits than the world around him. (HEY! What's wrong with that??)

As a joke, his cousin sends an actress to his room one night. Oh no! The trouble begins! He hears the rapping at his door "--three seconds leaked by--the rap sounded."

(The Raven anyone? THE RAVEN? All I could think about was Poe here.)

Horace is almost 18 while the very mature Marcia Meadow is 19. She is bold and just sits right down in one of his reading chairs: "Horace stared at her dazedly. The momentary suspicion came to him that she existed there only as a phantom of his imagination."

She grabs his attention, by her boldness and ability to spout off dramatic lines from plays. Eventually he agrees to attend one of her plays--after my favorite exchange in the story:

"No," interrupted Marcia emphatically. "And you're a sweet boy. Come here and kiss me."

Horace stopped quickly in front of her.

"Why do you want me to kiss you?" he asked intently. "Do you just go round kissing people?"

"Why, yes," admitted Marcia, unruffled. "'At's all life is. Just going round kissing people."

Wisdom, again, in just a snippet of dialogue. F. Scott gets me every time, with every single moment he captures. Of course--there will be kissing, there will even be a marriage between the unlikely couple and a complete role reversal by the end. And even one of my favorite words--syncopated--makes its appearance.

"Poor gauzy souls trying to express ourselves in something tangible. Marcia with her written book; I with my unwritten ones. Trying to choose our mediums and then taking what we get--and being glad."

Never answer the door when someone knocks--you never know who it might be...you never know what they may take from you.

~~J

"Winter Dreams"

from: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Scribners, 1989)

Pages 217-236

Original illustration by Arthur William Brown for Metropolitan Magazine

I decided to stay in a seasonal realm and found myself reading (and enjoying) another Gatsby cluster story. "Winter Dreams" first appeared in Metropolitan Magazine in December 1922. and was later put in a collection.

F. Scott was working on his third novel at the time and eliminated some of the text in the magazine and later used it in The Great Gatsby. Little did I know while reading that "Winter Dreams" seems to be his most discussed short story--at least of the ones I have read thus far.

"In the fall when the days became crisp and gray, and the long Minnesota winter shut down like the white lid of a box..." We follow Dexter Green, winter dreamer and the finest golf caddy (only for extra pocket money) from age 14 to 32.

He has big dreams, as a golf champion commanding over imaginary audiences as he defeats Mr. T. A. Hedrick a hundred times--each different, but important. Typical 14-year-old boy stuff, I suppose.

Until he means Miss Judy Jones one day over the summer while he is caddying at Sherry Island Golf Club in New Jersey...bam! She ruins him, even though she is only eleven-- "beautifully ugly" but with a spark and "lips twisted down at the corners when she smiled..."

After observing and conversing with Miss Jones and her nurse, he quits. Suddenly because "he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation required a violent and immediate outlet."

Part two takes place nine years later, and Dexter has gone to a university in the East (leaving behind the Midwest) and has become a successful business man (laundry business, washing woollen golf-stockings without shrinking them) and is invited to play at the Sherry Island Golf Club.

Guess who is there and is "arrestingly beautiful" and always looking as if she wants to be kissed?

Now we get more beautiful F. Scott prose:

"Later in the afternoon the sun went down with a riotous swirl of gold and varying blues and scarlets, and left the dry, rustling night of Western summer. Dexter watched from the veranda of the Golf Club, watched the even overlap of the waters in the little wind, silver molasses under the harvest-moon. Then the moon held a finger to her lips and the lake became a clear pool, pale and quiet..."

Dexter happens to come across Miss Judy Jones at the lake, and of course, he's already in love with her...just as every other man is..."His heart turned over like a the fly-wheel of the boat, and, for the second time, her casual whim gave a new direction to his life."

This is the point where I'm internally screaming at Dexter--NO! She's going to break your heart! Don't do it, don't do it....but he doesn't listen. Poor Dexter.

Parts 3 and 4 we watch the intoxicating Judy work her spell and ruin a man. That's how women are, after all. "When the scarlet corners of her lips curved down, it was less a smile than an invitation to a kiss." Man? Many men, as the snobbish daughter of a rich man--she can do whatever she pleases.

"She was not a girl who could be 'won' in the kinetic sense--she was proof against cleverness, she was proof against charm;..." I think F. Scott is talking about me here, but maybe not.

Dexter finally realizes that he could not have Judy Jones (finally!)--"Then he said to himself that he loved her, and after a while he fell asleep." This is how these things go. He becomes engaged to another woman even.

But damn her, if that Judy Jones doesn't come back into the picture. Poor Irene doesn't stand a chance! Judy comes back from vacation and actually confronts Dexter and proposes to HIM:

"I'd like to marry you if you'll have me, Dexter. I suppose you think I'm not worth having..."

A million phrases of anger, pride, passion, hatred, tenderness fought on his lips. Then a perfect wave of emotion washed over him, carrying off with it a sediment of wisdom, of convention, of doubt, of honor. This was his girl who was speaking, his own, his beautiful, his pride.

"Won't you come in?" He heard her draw in her breath sharply.

Waiting.

"All right," his voice was trembling, "I'll come in."

We could end it right here. But we go on and we fast forward seven years to see what has become of Dexter and Judy. Poor Irene and the rest of the Sherry Island Golf Club crew. I'll stop right here and let you find out for yourself.

-----

I do love a good moment of tension. A moment that is written so clearly and with so much...HONESTY that it drips from the pages and wells up in my heart. Moments. F. Scott is so good with his moments between lovers or almost-lovers or will-never-be lovers.

I always get the question, "What do you write?"

I say, "short fiction." I get a look of confusion. "But like what?"

And then I come up with, "Moments. I write moments between people."

More confused looks. F. Scott understands.

~~J

Note: I had a good time noticing repeated words whilst reading (not complaining, only noticing) especially ecstasy and spasmodically.

"The Ice Palace"

from: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Scribners, 1989)

Pages 48-69

This was the second time I read this particular short story--in fact, The Ice Palace was my first (and therefore my favorite) by F. Scott. It was originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in May of 1920 and was included in a collection.

I like how it poetically it begins on a September day:

"The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over an art jar, and the freckling shadows here and there only intensified the rigor of the bath of light."

Can't you just TASTE that?

We are introduced to Sally Carrol of Tarleton, Georgia, (apparently a town F. Scott writes a lot about--it makes me think of the identical twins buzzing around Scarlet O'Hara at the barbecue). She is lovely and nineteen and has all the boys within her grasp, especially Clark Darrow.

But Sally Carrol has an imagination and thirst for life elsewhere, as we learn she is engaged to a Yankee she met in Asheville over the summer. Fie!

In the second section we are introduced to Harry (the Yankee) and he seems respectable enough. We go to one of Sally Carrol's favorite places, a cemetery and visit "Margery Lee 1844-1873"...a woman never known but often imagined as the quintessential Southern Belle.

--"...and then she kissed him until the sky seemed to fade out and all her smiles and tears to vanish in an ecstasy of eternal seconds." What a kiss!

We travel along by train to the great white North, covered in snow and freezing cold. So are the people, as you can imagine--especially the ladies, they are "vaguely Scandinavian."

Sally Carrol wants to play in the snow, build snowmen, and go sledding. They finally indulge her but she realizes all of these things are typical of children, not adults. Ho-Hum.

There is a party and she only has one interesting conversation with a professor (of course!)--and we realize that Sally Carrol may be rethinking her choice:

"You see I always think of people as feline or canine, irrespective of sex."

"Which are you?"

"I'm feline. So are you. So are most Southern men an' most of these girls here."

"What's Harry?"

"Harry's canine distinctly. All the men I've met to-night seem to be canine."

Ouch!

Fast forward to the breathtaking palace built of ice-- "three stories in the air, with battlements and embrasures and narrow icicled windows, and the innumerable electric lights inside..."

Now here we get to the "good stuff" because Sally Carrol is "dazzled by the magic of the great crystal walls" and starts repeating lines from Kubla Khan (smart girl!) to herself and my poetry mind starts to drool:

It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

F. Scott is a smart one, because if you squint your mind's eye just right you can see the relationship between the poem and his short story. It's so rich!

I can't give away the ending of the story--but I could probably write a scholarly paper about it. What really happens to Sally Carrol? Really? Think about it, look at the subtle hints and get back to me on this...

~~J

p.s. alcohol mentioned? "hard yella licker"....but there is a LOT of coffee-drinking!

"The Sensible Thing"

from: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli (Scribners, 1989)
Pages 289-301

(Jonquils, not Daisies...but here we have his love of yellow flowers, oddly enough there is no mention of alcohol in this story...)

"The crowd all looked slightly upward and took deep March breaths, and the sun dazzled their eyes so that scarcely any one saw any one else but only their own reflection on the sky."

I decided to step away from the Tender clusters and picked my next short story based solely on the title...

Funny how that works sometimes.

So I moved into my F. Scott reading position: it's almost like praying, because I kneel aside my bed and prop my head against a pillow.

There with a highlighter I get down to business.

I really liked this story (which belongs to the Gatsby cluster)--it was originally published in "Liberty" in July 1924. The earliest piece I have read thus far.

It's a heartbreaking tale of the lost love between George and Jonquil--"the dark little girl who had made this mess, this terrible and intolerable mess...waiting to be sent for in a town in Tennessee."

George is working in New York and after receiving a letter--"in sacred ink, on blessed paper...He read the commas, the blots, and the thumb-smudge on the margin"...and has to go visit her again (losing his job in the process).

NOT a sensible thing. Like a lot of his stories, we have to read between the lines, and I like that.

"Perhaps she too would see the sunset and pause for a moment, turning, remembering, before he faded with her sleep into the past."

Ten months pass and a lot changes: as it always does. The distance is too much for the heart to traverse. Remember this is the time of letters, nothing digital about it. But George goes back one more time and we have our big moment:

"Does my being here bother you?"
"No." The answer was both reticent and impersonally sad. It depressed him.
"Are you engaged?" he demanded.

"No."

"Are you in love with some one?"
She shook her head.

"Oh." He leaned back in his chair.

We have our answer with his reaction. We know how she shook her head--in which direction her neck moved. How she probably closed her eyes when she did it. I think we hear his heart breaking in that moment too. There is room there between the lines.

And, of course, F. Scott pulls it all together at the end. His endings are different. He rarely leaves on an image or a scene--a piece of dialogue. Instead we get wisdom to pull it all together.

"Well, let it pass, he thought: April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice."

Like that's not the most true statement ever written in the world. Hopeful and tragic.

~~J

Let me just "geek out" a bit right here and marvel at the play on the name Jonquil and the fact the flower is also known as a Narcissus--and the springness of the story with the mention of both March...(when they bloom) and April when it is all over...it's three or more metaphors all colliding. It makes me drool.