On “For Something to Do” by Elmore Leonard (4943 words) ***

Here's a short story that seems somewhat typical of Leonard's work: the violence, the tough guy focus, the criminal element. Even the fact that this is set in rural Michigan might be seen as emblematic of Leonard's work—bringing together a common setting (Michigan) and the western elements of his early work. Evan has married his sweetheart. The two are expecting guests, but they hope, strangely, that the guests won't show: in fact, they'd be okay with the guests getting in an accident or something else dreadful. The reason soon becomes clear why. Cal (a relative) and Ray (a former boyfriend) are tough guys here to spend time with Evan's wife and not too keen on seeing her poor horse farmer husband. Leonard's work probably works better over a larger page count, where the plots can unfurl in unpredictable complexity. Here, as seems inevitable in so much Leonard fiction, a fight ensues, and we see the parties come to a head, the situation “resolved,” though the degree to which that resolution is permanent, I have to wonder, would be questionable outside the tidy resolution of the story. You can read it here at Harper's Magazine.

On “The Last Thing I Heard” by Theron Hopkins (1343 words) *****

Here's a hard-luck story that manages to feel somehow genuine and authentic, the great strength of this piece. It's about a son, and about a dad who takes one too many financial hits. What happens to such a relationship in the years that follow? Read the story here at The Sun.

On "The Legend" by Edith Wharton (10,468 words) ****

So some author writes some cool stuff, but no one notices or cares. That's probably the tale of most writers, though most probably aren't that good, which helps explain why no one care, but sometimes there are good authors who aren't good at catching the market. This happens. This happens to Pellerin. So he leaves, drops out of society, disappears. Meanwhile, in his absence, his books catch on. Folks forge reading groups around him. Scholars write about his work. A whole philosophy of life gets based around what he has to say. And then one day, he returns, not as Pellerin but as someone else. He's heard rumors, wants to know what people think of his work. He goes to the reading groups, meets with his fans and scholars, none of whom know who he is. He even writes another book. What do you think happens? Read the story here.

On "The Lady's Maid Bell" by Edith Wharton (8729 words) ****

So much for going to the country for rest. A woman recovering from typhoid goes to work as a maid at a quiet estate, but one of the people she meets her first day is not alive. Why doesn't the staff use the bell system that has been integrated throughout the house? We soon find out. The ghost leads us down many paths, though I'm not sure that the story provides many answers by its end, but I think that's what makes this story so mystifying. Read the story here at Project Gutenberg.

On "Dinner with Craig" by Kate Folk (1090 words) ****

Here, a snake consumes a young woman's world, quite literally. One of the cool things about Folk's stories is the way that the metaphorical language we use in our lives is transformed into the literal, thus commenting both on our use of language and of our perception of the world. I mean, after all, what do we really mean when we say that we are being consumed by something? "Dinner with Craig" shows us. Read the story here at the Adroit Journal.

On "Expiation" by Edith Wharton (8246 words) ***

This story is somewhat predictable, but the question at its heart is one worth pondering. The focus is on writers and on how they can get their writing to be more popularly successful. The way? Make it controversial. If you can get someone to ban it, you're sure of success. When a writer's attempt to write something in that vein, however, it is given a good review and noted as being quite pleasant, much to the author's chagrin. The story revolves around her attempt to "fix" the book's reception. Read the story here at Project Gutenberg.

On "Dating a Somnambulist" by Kate Folk (849 words) ***

In Kate Folk's world, weird stuff happens. That weird stuff is metaphorical for the angst we feel in regular life over the mundane. This mundane finds its way into lists here of what her sleep-walking boyfriend picks up a night. And yet, despite the trouble, Folk's narrator lives on--there could be worse things in other worlds. Read the story here at Hobart.

On "The Descent of Man" by Edith Wharton (7317 words) ****

What if you wrote something you knew was atrocious but that you also knew most people would take seriously (and love)? Would you sell it? Such is the quandary in this tale about a scientist that publishes something that goes against most of his values--its meant as a satire but is not taken as such. That's fine, he thinks, because those who would understand the satire would still understand it. But he finds the attention to his work not easily voided. Read the story here.

On "The Rembrandt" by Edith Wharton (5986 words) ****

What makes for great art? That is the question in yet another Wharton story on the same theme. Here, a woman claims to own a Rembrandt that is unsigned. As such, no museum will buy it, though she needs the money. Is it the signature alone that makes us declare a work great? Read the story here at Project Gutenberg.

On "The Recovery" by Edith Wharton (6978 words) ****

What makes for great art? That is the question that Wharton asks in this piece in which a painter benefits from a visit to a museum, where he realizes that his own work can be much improved--and where he also realizes that what he has been producing is not art in the form that is worthy, even if others like it. Read the story here at Project Gutenberg.

On "A Cup of Cold Water" by Edith Wharton (10,262 words) ****

Woburn loves a woman with expensive tastes. What this means is his spent out his savings, his year's salary, and has "borrowed" generously from his employer. The end is near. Men can be pretty dumb when it comes to ladies. Tomorrow, there's an inspection at the job; Woburn will be found out. The story focuses on his last night, his plans to run to some other place, and the sorrow of losing the gal for whom he's gotten himself in so much trouble. At some point in the story, as he's staying in a hotel room instead of the boat he's to flee on, having locked himself out of his apartment, he hears woman crying and . . . a click, of a gun. It's this last item that the story revolves around and, alas, the least believable. Were it not for this one plot point, the story would be quite an achievement. Read the story here at Project Gutenberg.

On "Souls Belated" by Edith Wharton (10,669 words) ****

Much has changed about divorce and relationships since Wharton wrote this story, and yet in some ways, not really. The woman in this story has run off with another man, and her husband has thus, unsurprisingly, filed for divorce. Scandal shall ensue. But really, will it? The couple have no desire to live according to societal standards, which they feel are inauthentic and lend themselves to fighting against what real love is all about--you don't need paper and laws for love. But they also feel the pull toward such, toward marriage. After the initial scandal, if they marry, after a few years, they'll be like any other couple and will be accepted back into mainstream high society (the first marriage forgotten). In the sense that divorce still brings with it a certain scandal and that marriage to another, after a time, essentially erases earlier history, these ideas seem as applicable today as one hundred years ago. The difference now would be in the scandal of not marrying--something that is fairly common now. While I can see the point, as raised in the story, that laws and pieces of paper and taboos are in a sense not true emblems of love, especially if we conform to them only to fit in; at the same time, the laws and pieces of paper, I would contend, do much to shelter and confirm that love. I can't help but think how uncertain one might feel if a "spouse" could run off at any moment without any consequences; the law makes such a break more difficult and lends to furthering one's commitment, which, in the end, is actually showing more love. Read the story here.

On "The Letters" by Edith Wharton (14,438 words) *****

This story is many things and one that seems, at first, particularly timely in a nation focused on the #MeToo movement. It's a tale of a man taking advantage of a naive young woman. Or at least, that's what it seems at the beginning, when Mr. Dearing first takes a pass at his nanny, an older single gal whose life has not turned out so well. Disadvantaged, with few good marriage prospects, she's falls hard for the married man. And then . . . the story takes a strange turn. Mr. Dearing's wife dies. The two might actually be able to settle down together. Does the man really want her, however? It seems so--and then, maybe not, and then maybe so, and then maybe not. The middle portion of this long piece reads like many a real-life romance, the way we never know someone's heart or true motives. But in the end, the story becomes something other than that, something about the will, about how sometimes truth is less important than willing one's self into happiness. Read the story here.

On "Afterward" by Edith Wharton (5322 words) *****

This ghost tale focuses on a ghost one doesn't know exists until "afterward," and as such it's rather chilling. A couple buys a haunted house in which nothing seems wrong. But the woman keeps having premonitions about something being odd or strange. That said, nothing is. Until . . . it's too late. Afterward. Read the story here.

On "Breakfast" by John Steinbeck (1169 words) ***

While not one of Steinbeck's best stories, this one still shows much of his great skill. It's essentially the description of a breakfast among hired farmhands. Steinbeck thrusts at readers the sight, the smells, the taste, the sounds of all that is there. Read the story here.

On "Monkey Park" by Madison Smartt Bell (about 7,000 words) ****

This one involves a night of randomness. It centers on a woman and her male friend and her husband. She spends more time with the former than the latter, and there's a feeling of sadness insofar as we know that there's something going on between them that they won't quite acknowledge and can't. There's putting on clown faces, drinking too much, going to a park to play and to look at monkeys involved. Read the story from Hudson Review here at Jstor (you can sign up for a free account and read it online).

On "Full Circle" by Edith Wharton (8349 words) *****

Betton is an author who finds fan mail tiresome, so he hires a man named Vyse to respond to the mail for him. Vyse is a former classmate--and also an author himself, an unsuccessful author who once asked Betton for help getting his novel published, a novel that Betton found riveting, much better than anything he could write himself. Betton, however, did not help--let other matters get in the way. Now, with Vyse as his needy and poor assistant, Betton feels guilty--but also uncertain of Vyse's motives. Does Vyse recognize that Betton is not as good a writer? Does he realize that this second novel is not as good as the first? How can Betton keep up his reputation for Vyse or keep needy Vyse in his employee? In one sense, this is a story of revenge--but of revenge that a person perpetrates on himself for a life badly lived. Read the story here.

On "Flight" by John Steinbeck (7661 words) *****

One of my favorite stories of all time, this one reminds me of what I found so engrossing about John Steinbeck when I was a teenager. It's a bit overwrought and melodramatic toward the beginning, but the slow, deliberative descriptions of a young boy--er, man--on the run fits with the inevitable end. Read the story here.

On "The Last Asset" by Edith Wharton (12,119 words) *****

A journalist befriends an American woman who is at the center of the social world from which he draws his stories. She in turn wants a favor--she wants him to get in touch with her husband, from whom she has been separated for years. The husband is needed for the daughter's wedding, or else no wedding can take place. Why the husband is separated, how he lives, and why he has no interest in helping is at the center of this story, a center which comes to encompass even the journalist. The story is told in the third-person limited perspective of the journalist, and yet, it's one of those tales that fits in with The Great Gatsby or On the Road insofar as the story isn't really about the main character but about someone whom the main character is obsessed with (although actually, this story is about the main character insofar as he is the one transformed in it, even if he's not the main spring for the events). Those two novels are first person, and I wonder to some degree why, given that the story is still told from a limited perspective, why Wharton didn't settle on first person for this one. Read the story here.

On "Pointing East, Where Things Happen" by Donna Baier Stein (3770 words) ***

Is he or isn't he? When a man has an affair, it's hard to trust him ever again--that's the angle in this story, centered on a revival meeting and a mysterious bracelet too small for his wife. Read the story here at Summerset Review.