On "Goodbye, Columbus" by Philip Roth ****

I took this book on a recent trip with me because it had been years since I'd read it and because the old edition I have is a pocket paperback. In this age of e-books and trade paperbacks, having a literary pocketbook on one's travels is rather nice. You know, a book one can actually put in one's pocket--or lose without feeling to put out, since it was only 75 cents to begin with.

I first bought the book on another trip, I believe, to New York State, from California. This time, I was going the other way, from the East Coast back to the West, where I hadn't been in nearly a decade. I first bought the book because I was fascinated with Roth's dialogue, as it came to me in another more recent book of his (recent, that is, eighteen years ago). The themes seemed similar--an illicit love affair. I remember being somewhat disappointed, but I've kept the book all these years because it is Roth's one book of stories.

The novella at the heart of this book, this time around, read very well. It was the highlight of the book for me. The dialogue was quite good, of course, but I was even more blown away by some of Roth's turns of phrase and by his ability to show youthful love and lust in all its terrible vanity. It's still not close to being one of my favorites among Roth's oeuvre, but it's a fine short text, an exemplar of the form.

I wish I could say the same of the short stories. Fine, certainly, but some of them seem a bit forced, such as "Epstein," the tale of an older man moved to infidelity by the youths full of lust around him.

All of the stories focus on Jewish culture to some extent. "Defender of the Faith" focuses on Jewish soldiers hiding behind religion to get days off and other perks. "The Conversion of the Jews," oft anthologized, tells the tale of a kid forcing others to admit that God is powerful enough to have done what Judaism denies. "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings" tells of school hijinks and friendship and somehow manages to be more than the sum of its parts, despite its slight length. Most interesting to me among these pieces, though, is a story called "Eli, the Fanatic." Were I in a class, I would almost certainly write about the idea of the double in this tale, how Eli, a Jewish lawyer called upon to oust some orthodox Jews from the WASP neighborhood where secular Jews mix easily, ends up switching places with one of said orthodox Jews and discovers . . . himself. The one is the same as the other, deep down, Roth seems to be saying, all part of the same whole that is Jewish culture and that cannot be denied. It's a fascinating idea that bears exploration.

On "A Simple Explanation" by Lauren Becker (422 words) ***

I hate meeting people. I love it. The desires both to meet and to crawl into a whole and never talk to a stranger again fight against one another. I know where Becker is coming from, this hopelessness, this feeling of "don't even bother." It happens to me sometimes, when I'm talking to someone who seems fantastic and interesting. I know in the end it won't work--or I talk myself into that position. Why try? Why indeed? Read this little gem of hopelessness here at Storyglossia.

On "Homo Faber" by Max Frisch ****

I first read this novel about thirteen years ago now, soon after I moved to Texas. I remember it as part of that time, as that summer of my first year there. I had picked it up cheap (one dollar) and mostly because it had been adapted into a Sam Shepard movie called Voyager. I've never seen the film, but I'd like to, especially now after my second reading these many years later.

The book starts slowly enough. The narrator is obsessed with facts, with science. He's an engineer. He believes that he--that man--can control things. And we watch as he, this ultimate man of control, loses himself to emotion and commits one of the most base acts one can imagine. Sure, he justifies himself, but to what extent we are to believe him is questionable.

Pulled many years earlier into a love affair that he runs away from, he once again finds himself on the run from love, taking a cruise across the Atlantic for rest, only to be drawn into the grip of his lust. Watching it happen, and the revelations that follow, are fascinating. This is where the book gets really interesting. On the whole, this first part of the book works better than the second, which plays like a rather boring remix album. But luckily for readers, the first part forges the majority of the book.

On "The Shadowy Third" by Ellen Glasgow (10,215 words) ****

In "The Shadowy Third," one of Glasgow's most popular stories, a young nurse goes to aid a woman who is suffering from a bout of supposed insanity. The nurse finds the woman to be totally within her wits, however, until she discovers that the daughter that she sees coming and going throughout the house is actually a phantom no one other than the woman and the nurse can see. The story continues from there, with the discovery of why the daughter haunts the house and of just how dastardly the people living in the house are. This story somehow manages to make one actually feel for the poor, supposedly delusional woman. Is she insane and paranoid or is there something to all that she believes? The phantom seems more a physical presence in this Glasgow story than in most of her other ghost stories, but the same themes sanity versus insanity, kindness versus unkindness, and the haunting of memory pervade. Read the story here.

On "The Collected Stories of Ellen Glasgow" by Ellen Glasgow ***

This collection of stories, mostly written right around 1920, constitutes the last of the books in my Gilded Age reading list that had consumed my reading for much of this past year. Modernism dawns, and in Glasgow's very first story here, that essence seems apparent. In "Between Two Shores," the dialogue is snappy and witty, much like any movie's repartee, but much like many a nineteenth-century story (any many a movie for that matter), the story itself seems a bit manufactured. A man on the run finds a woman who is lacking her husband; without her knowledge, he decides to pose as that husband, and somehow things work out in the end, with the woman falling for the man and the two wandering off into the happy beyond.

Quite a few of the stories in the collection have similar kinds of contrived popular plot twists (or--this being nineteenth-century fiction, story-ending didactic morals). And yet, there is an artist at work here, one whom it is fascinating to watch paint her picture. "A Point in Morals" is a frame story that poses the question of whether it is better to assist someone to die or to let that person die in pain. "Thinking Makes It So" is a wish-fulfillment piece in which a writer finds a fan who falls in love with her through words rather than through looks.

"The Difference" is one of the few stories that ends on an almost sad note. In it, a woman convinces herself that it is best to let her husband leave her for another woman out of her great love for him only to discover that the other woman is merely a fling--would that the adulteress truly had been worth such love, the woman wishes, for the fact that she isn't merely cheapens her own love for her husband and his love for her. In "The Artless Age," older women discourse on the dating habits of the younger generation, in what is one of the better set of character depictions in the book.

Glasgow's most interesting stories are the ghost stories, however, which resemble in some ways Ambrose Bierce's. Most of them, however, run along a similar plot line. In each, the narrator goes to some new location and watches another person who he or she discovers by the end of the story is a phantom that only one other person (considered insane by others) can see. What makes the stories interesting, however, is that in each the phantom is a stand-in for some kind of memory that only the one person has access to. In "Dare's Gift" it is the Old South that urges a woman to betray her husband and ruin his career, just as all others who have lived in the same mansion have done. In "The Past," a man lives in the memories of a former wife, who appears as a phantom in the house, much to the man's current wife. In "Whispering Leaves," a child is cared for by his dead Mammy. "The Shadowy Third" serves as almost the opposite of "The Past" and "Whispering Leaves" with a phantom reaping revenge rather than serving as some joyous past memory.

The collection includes editorial notes on the magazine publications and subsequent alterations by Glasgow, which are interesting. The editor, however, also feels the need to pass judgment on each story, spelling out how each falls short of perfection, a practice I found a bit irritating.

On "Orchids" by Lydia Williams (1288 words) ***

I'm not sure why I find this story so subtly sad. There's a woman and her husband--a woman who works hard to become a better person, a husband who barely tries at all. And yet, the husband comes off seeming more capable. The woman, by contrast, keeps slipping into old routines, into, for example, a binge drinking habit. Perhaps what is so sad here is that the lack of moving forward--the story itself is light on plot--seems so akin to my achieving of goals. It seems more like one is given a standard personality and mode of behavior and no matter how hard one tries, the old ways inevitably prevail. We can never become the person we want to become. Is the fight worth it? Are the people who don't even bother better? Happier? Or are they even bigger losers? Not that this story is going to help answer those questions, but you can read it anyway, here at Apple Valley Review.

On "John Barleycorn" by Jack London ***

I was thinking this was a novel but was happy to find out this was actually more a memoir of London's drinking rather than a veiled fictional account of it. I was also surprised to learn that this book is not as much a memoir as propaganda. That latter definition of it makes it interesting on a superficial level but far less interesting as literature. London's point seems first and foremost to secure the vote for women so that they can pass prohibition (something men would never do for themselves). London then goes into an account of his own drinking, how he became drawn to it for social compatibility reasons rather than a desire for drink in and of itself; he doesn't even care for drinking, he says.

But this is where it gets truly interesting. He binges as a kid, on beer. As a hard laborer, he has to drink to be one of the guys--or to get along with some of society's best most-caring men, the bartenders (the only ones who will lend a guy money in times of need), whose generosity then becomes an obligation on the part of the recipient to fraternize in the man's workplace. He learns the rules of drinking, how if one person treats, one must treat back, and so on, till one is stuck with twelve or fifteen drinks inside one's system.

Perhaps I'm a cretin, but I've never followed this rule; perhaps that also is why I feel awkward when others pay for a drink for me. I resent those who urge me to have another just to be with them. I generally only carry enough money on me for a drink or two and so can't get dragged into multiple rounds. I like drinking. But I don't like getting drunk. And I don't care to subscribe to the rules London feels obligated to follow.

The deeper London gets into drinking the more interesting the text becomes, in part because it becomes an increasingly self-justifying work, a work of an alcoholic who believes himself not to be one. Or is he being tongue in cheek? It's hard to tell at times. In one passage, he talks of how horribly easy it is to become attached to regular drinks even as a nonalcoholic like himself (imagine, he says, just how much more difficult such things are for an alcoholic). This would seem obviously a joke. But then he notes how he doesn't drink for three months at a time to justify how he isn't addicted or how he can still function as a writer, still churn out four pages a day, even when drinking. Meanwhile, he goes from having a drink after writing to having one in the middle of it to one at the beginning. He descends more and more into its grip. On that level, as the story of becoming an alcoholic, this is a fascinating and scary work, for even in all my above bravado about my limits of drinking, London makes any drinking seem like a slippery slope, and so it could be. Read it here at Project Gutenberg.

On "Theories of Gravity" by Patrick Haas, "Courting in the Music Store" by John Grey, and "Cheekbones" by Wendy Pratt ****

Of late, when reading poetry, I've been returning more and more to imagery. Certainly imagery is the basis for many poems, but for a while it seemed as if my own poetic impulses had been focusing on the rhythm of the language itself--or on some kind of emotional connection. Here Haas's descriptions are so strong, however, that they have a kind of emotional tie of their own. I'll never think of eyes quite the same again--or of a dress in the wind. Read the poem here at Caffeine Destiny.

John Gray's poem doesn't deal as much with imagery as an idea, but many an interesting poem does just that. This one made me stop and think. Were I funny, well, it likely wouldn't matter. Why do we pick the inanimate object over the silly stranger? Read the poem here at Northville Review.

The body of contemporary poetry is full of free verse constituents, many of which use images to beautiful effect. "Cheekbones," however, is more formalist, using repeat lines and rhyme in a kind of villanelle (I didn't take the time to go find out which exact form the poem is mimicking, if any at all), and it uses the form to full effect. After all the poem is itself about mimicking in terms of ancestry. Nice to see someone working in a form so rarely used today--or used with such skill. Read the poem here at Snakeskin.

On "How to Become a Regular" by Courtney Kelsch (604 words) ***

The story as advice column--it's a gimmick used often enough that it's familiar but not so often that it isn't unique each time one sees it. Such stories have a way of standing out, perhaps because the genre is difficult to manage in a way that tells a story. Kelsch's piece here manages to convey a kind of sadness on the part of its narrator--not "you" but "we"--the tired-out waitresses at a diner who wish simply for some other existence. I know the feeling, and the good thing is that most of the time, other lives do come. Most of the time. Read the story here at the Angler.

On "The Trials" by Jedediah Berry (897 words) ****

Here's a story that's work on all cylinders. Berry takes an obsessiveness with the Salem witch trials, two twins, and model airplanes, and bullying and puts them all together, stacking them one on top of the other on top of the other, circling back to each until the job is complete. Trials become a kind of motif working throughout the piece, until that final line, when . . . I'm not saying. Go read it here at Fictionaut.

On "Different Turns" by Derek Alger (1073 words) ***

Here's a rather simply piece, revolving around, well, "different turns," as the title says. What of a life we could have had? What of a life we could have had if we'd had more information? I feel like this quite often, as I get older. If I'd only known . . . But one learns with time, learns what things mean, how to interpret certain body language and certain words. And it seems that one just keeps learning. Only in hindsight does what we "should have done" become clear. Read one such story here at Pif.

On "Between Here and Here" by Amy Bloom (5725 words) ****

All right, here's one of those grody, sentimental stories about taking care of a dying parent--only it's not grody or sentimental, and that's why it's great. The story's opening sets its town: "I had always planned to kill my father." This is a dad who is mostly unsympathetic. He's a jerk--making fun of his own kids, tossing his wife's cooking on the floor. When he's left alone late in life, he doesn't seem much to care--his wife dead, his children not wanting to spend time with him. But somehow, we learn to love the guy, even as the children do, as we see him age to a point of vulnerability. Unlike most stories where the senile grow ugly, this man's senility reveals a new gentler person, one we're sad to see fading so quickly. Read the story here at Narrative Magazine.

On "Inflation" by Jeremy Griffin (4223 words) ***

Here's a story put together with a fetish and a few standard life themes (people dying, love). It's the fetish that makes this piece stand out, gives those themes a rather odd concreteness. Think inflation. Balloons. Growth. Cancer. Self-help. Read the story here at Hot Metal Bridge.

On "Martin Eden" by Jack London ****

Growing up, I read London's tales of dogs and wolves and of one seafaring man. I did not like London. I was told I read the wrong things. One of the books I needed to read, I was advised, was Martin Eden. Indeed, this book seems more intriguing than the animal stories that inspired no interest in me.

That said, I had a kind of love-hate relationship with this book and with Eden himself. Perhaps, that's what London intends, or perhaps London is Eden, which is also easy to read into the novel. I would prefer to think the former, to think that this is some kind of psychological study of a flawed character, more impressionist than realist.

The book starts with a silly love affair. In fact, perhaps, writing a love affair that doesn't seem silly is impossible to write. Perhaps, the cynical part of me will only accept love combusting. Watching Eden fall for this woman was rather agonizing.

But the text gets interesting from there. Eden is anything but a flat character. Rather, he is one of the most transformative characters I've ever read in fiction. He is constantly discovering new things about the world and about himself. In an effort to win this woman he loves, he educates himself, reads constantly. And he begins to write. He becomes a writer. He decides that this is how he will make his living. And he doesn't give up.

It's a good thing I didn't read this book when I was twenty. I'd have likely fallen for Eden's idealism, have believed that if you just worked hard enough you could be anything you wished--even a famous writer. Eden becomes, in his self-education, a man of incredible hubris. And in this also is one of the things that rather disturbs me about the book, because he never loses that hubris, never discovers that he isn't the great man he comes to think of himself as. Rather, he becomes disenchanted with the world, with all people around him--something not unbelievable, given that his education essentially divides him from others. Or does it? He thinks it does, but to think that, he also has to think himself better than all others.

The ending is somewhat disappointing as well, but I won't go into it here. However, the center of the book, as Eden discovers himself is fascinating. And even that love affair becomes fascinating. His girlfriend wants him to get a job. All his associates want that as well, want him to give up his dream, think he's being silly to pursue it so devotedly. They don't have faith in him. In the end, Eden thinks that this means that they don't love him. And maybe he's correct. Maybe, as long as one is successful, one wants to be your friend, but if one lives as a pauper and does as one wants, then one is a sponge and not someone people want to be around. Does this mean love is unreal or superficial? Maybe. But love is also--and this Eden never accepts--based, on some level, in circumstance, in action. Refuse to work, live poorly, why would a woman want a man like that? A man of riches, well, in the end, he can at least provide--as would have been nearly essential at the time London was writing. It's nice to think love conquers all, but reality is something else: it's cold, and love doesn't beat long when one partner refuses to supply for the needs of the other. In the end, Eden, nineteen at the start of the book, seems no more than his twenty-one years at its end, despite how much he's learned. You can read the novel here at Project Gutenberg.

On "A New Tattoo" by Tina Barry (275 words) ****

This short piece does what so many great short stories do. It makes you a bit confused, just as the narrator is, with one's emotions. Are we to rejoice at the return of this mother with the new tattoo or be angry? We're, of course, a little of both. In this short scene, we get a sense of this father's conundrum. Read the story here at the Boston Literary Magazine.

On "In The Middle Of Nowhere With Company" by Ruth Nestvold (4733 words) ***

Put a story on unfamiliar ground and add some strange metaphor made literal, and you have the makings of something quite unique. Nestvold's story here, about the birds of sorrow, chases those birds around the Alaskan frontier until they disappear. It's a story of grief and of recovery in a literalized form. Read it here at Abyss and Apex.

On "The Emperor Of Ice Cream" by Kevin Canty (8700 words) ****

I've been wanting to feature a Kevin Canty story since I started this blog. At one time, a great flash piece of his was featured on the Cutbank Web site, but in a transition to a new site, the old story disappeared, and so too did the chance to feature Canty--until now. I managed to find one that the folks at Five Chapters have posted, and it's a good one.

What makes Canty's work so memorable to me? He has a knack for fancy language when he wants to, but most often he works with rather stripped-down lingo, and this is a story that features mostly the latter. But straightforward narrative can be powerful when the story is good and the characters well drawn, and such is the case here. Lander nearly killed his brother, Tim, in a near-drunken car accident early in the summer and did manage to kill another driver. End of summer comes, and Lander has the chance to reunite with his brother--shrunken but now sort of well--and the rest of his estranged family. Tim is ready to return to their partying ways; not so much Lander (nor are Lander's parents keen on such), except that, you see, there's a girl involved, and that makes all the difference. Perhaps it's not the best idea to pursue this lady, but . . . Read the story here at Five Chapters.

On "The Whale Hunter" by Steinur Bell (4502 words) ***

This story starts off slow, telling us about, well, puffins--and puffin hunters. It could be some article in National Geographic. But I think that's kind of the point. Our narrator learns these things, and then he puts them into being, makes a story of them, pushes that story as far as it can go, waits to see how people will react. I do the same myself, sometimes--not lying--but rather doing something a little bit strange, waiting to see when someone will finally call me out--or if they will. It's an exercise in amusement, amusement for the one doing the performing, who is really in fact the audience studying the audience that is performing. But here our narrator takes it to yet another level. Not only does he tell this crazy story, he lives a life of pushing himself to the limits of propriety, seeing when the curtain will be dropped. Thing is, he waits. And waits. And waits. How much farther can he go? Read the story here at Agni.

On "Oops" by Kate Hill Cantrill (502 words) ****

Some stories are meant to be read aloud, because they're so beautifully written. Cantrill does just that in this short short called "Oops," a story that works its magic by repeating phrases and words in a slightly different order, slowly raising the tension as we come to see how obsessed the narrator is with a particular unpleasant incident of which she is the cause. Read the story here at Del Sol Review.

On "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair ***

My original post became corrupted, and unfortunately I've only been able to salvage the last half of it.

This book surprised me in part because it was much more a critique of capitalism than an expose on the meat industry. To be sure, the latter forges a good chunk of the novel, but it's not the novel's core. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, given Sinclair's own political leanings.

The story is one of an immigrant named Jurgis. It starts with familiar social realism and with troubles caused by society. But halfway through, another surprising thing is that it becomes a kind of adventure story. Jurgis becomes a crook. He becomes a politician. He becomes rich. He becomes poor again. This is supposed to be a critique of the system, but mostly he seems able to do these things because he gives up caring about anyone other than himself. I suppose that that is Sinclair's point--that capitalism is a system that rewards the selfish and that does so haphazardly or sort of haphazardly in a survival of the fittest sort of way. Only by banding together can common men survive.

Sounds great. But the elements of my doubt creeps in in those moments when Jurgis seems to be doing so materially well. If he reaps so many rewards by being selfish, why--except he fall--should he bother to help other men? What's more, many of the troubles in the book comes from Jurgis's own shortcomings. Had Sinclair stuck to Packingtown's abuse and Jurgis been less active in bringing his downfall had Jurgis remained wholly a victim all the time there might be more case of the Socialist cause. It would also be a less interesting novel.

I'm made to wonder why men so given to exploiting each other, so given to using others to gain power and prestige, would suddenly become wholesome individuals in the face of socialism. And this, going back to my twenties, was the problem I had with my coworker's abiding faith in the Revolution. No fan of capitalism myself, socialism, because of our own human nature, doesn't seem a viable alternative. What's needed is a turn in the human heart--one like what the socialists hope for. You can read this novel online here at Project Gutenberg.