So in reading the first section of this story, I thought immediately of two things. I thought of a Dresden Dolls music video in which a CD is sent to different people; the video is for the song "Sing," and people sing to the song on the CD that is sent to them. I also thought of the power struggle for Byzantium in the time preceding Justinian's rise to power. I was reminded of that because essentially, Byzantium experienced a civil war based around two sports teams. Fans of one team beat up on the others. Here, a man sends a song out and gets wildy different reactions, reactions that create a schism in the community that eventually lead to its downfall. In fact, all three of the songs in this short piece rest in the idea that a piece of art can make so much of an impact that it can make or break a community. I'd like to think so, though I don't really believe that is the case with most art these days. Read the story here at the Collagist.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
On "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" by Wells Tower ****
This book was the rage two or three years ago. Not being in an MFA program, however, I was out of the loop. I heard about it from a couple of people who were in an MFA program. I was at the beach. They had the book. I read it--or part of it, two stories. Good stuff. But I didn't run out immediately and buy it or read it. Now I have read it.
What can be said? Tower has a way with words--and with characters. He also writes in a way that is in some respects maddening. By that I mean that I found the work here Faulkneresque. And by that I mean not that Tower writes in cryptic garbled-up stream-of-consciousness that demands you've read everything else Tower has written before you know who in the world these people are the narrator keeps referring to. No, I mean that I'd get to the end of the story and think, That's it? That's really the ending? In other words, many of the stories didn't seem to have definitive ends. They just drew to a close. But you know, in a way that was refreshing. Everything ventured, nothing learned.
That's not the case with two stories in the collection, one of which is my favorite and one of which probably could be used as a frame to interpret all the other pieces in the collection. My favorite was "Down through the Valley," a tale in which a man goes to visit his daughter over at his ex-wife's place; the ex-wife left him for another man, and now she needs her ex-husband to take care of their daughter and this new man for a short while. Sounds like a normal, messed-up family story. And then it gets real messed up. They go to a bar and grill. The new man, Barry, gets involved in someone else's fight, and before the tale's over, the narrator's entire life is headed in a completely new and desperate direction, one he hardly seems responsible for.
The other story is the title story. I had been told it was one of the weaker stories in the collection, and I think I would generally concur. It involves Norsemen going to pillage a town. Having just read a huge chunk of Icelandic sagas this past year, the information here seems not atypical. There's a lot of murder and carnage. What's different is that Tower puts a contemporary sensibility on it, which means we get the gory descriptions. In the end, however, the main characters come to think a bit more deeply about their way of life, the pain that they cause to others. They meet a family they tore apart a few years earlier. And yet, that doesn't stop one of the men from kidnapping the one (now one-armed) daughter that the farmer has left for himself. In the concluding remarks, the narrator acknowledges, now a provider for his own family, his fear of pillagers coming to his own village and destroying his own family. Indeed, I think of it as one of the fears I've long held with regard to having a wife and children. Just how well could I provide, and could I really offer any protection? It seems we're more often victims to whatever a perpetrator wishes to put over on us.
The other stories all have intriguing plot points and characters to dig into. "The Brown Coast" involves a man who, after his father's death, has messed up his life--losing his job and his wife--and who is now trying to rebuild, starting slowly with an aquarium he puts into his new home. "Retreat" involves two brothers who haven't, historically, gotten along so well; now adults, the older brother invites the younger to a cabin he's purchased, and the two go hunting together, while the older tries to convince the younger that the cabin land is a good investment. In "Executors of Important Energies" the narrator's stepmom wrangles a way to reunite son and father; unfortunately, the father's mind isn't all there, and it seems more likely that the stepmom is simply dumping Dad on son. In "Leopard" a kid plays hookey from school but still has to deal with the stepdad he can't stand. In "Door in Your Eye" an eighty-two-year-old dad takes up living with his daughter and succumbs to the temptation to visit the hooker who lives across the street. In "Wild America" (perhaps my second favorite in the collection) a teen-aged girl competes with her cousin for affection; each of them want a boy, it seems, only to keep the other one from having him. And each finds herself doing dangerous things with older men in order to garner attention, things she knows she'll likely regret but can't let anyone else know. "On the Show" involves traveling fair workers and customers in an ensemble story.
What can be said? Tower has a way with words--and with characters. He also writes in a way that is in some respects maddening. By that I mean that I found the work here Faulkneresque. And by that I mean not that Tower writes in cryptic garbled-up stream-of-consciousness that demands you've read everything else Tower has written before you know who in the world these people are the narrator keeps referring to. No, I mean that I'd get to the end of the story and think, That's it? That's really the ending? In other words, many of the stories didn't seem to have definitive ends. They just drew to a close. But you know, in a way that was refreshing. Everything ventured, nothing learned.
That's not the case with two stories in the collection, one of which is my favorite and one of which probably could be used as a frame to interpret all the other pieces in the collection. My favorite was "Down through the Valley," a tale in which a man goes to visit his daughter over at his ex-wife's place; the ex-wife left him for another man, and now she needs her ex-husband to take care of their daughter and this new man for a short while. Sounds like a normal, messed-up family story. And then it gets real messed up. They go to a bar and grill. The new man, Barry, gets involved in someone else's fight, and before the tale's over, the narrator's entire life is headed in a completely new and desperate direction, one he hardly seems responsible for.
The other story is the title story. I had been told it was one of the weaker stories in the collection, and I think I would generally concur. It involves Norsemen going to pillage a town. Having just read a huge chunk of Icelandic sagas this past year, the information here seems not atypical. There's a lot of murder and carnage. What's different is that Tower puts a contemporary sensibility on it, which means we get the gory descriptions. In the end, however, the main characters come to think a bit more deeply about their way of life, the pain that they cause to others. They meet a family they tore apart a few years earlier. And yet, that doesn't stop one of the men from kidnapping the one (now one-armed) daughter that the farmer has left for himself. In the concluding remarks, the narrator acknowledges, now a provider for his own family, his fear of pillagers coming to his own village and destroying his own family. Indeed, I think of it as one of the fears I've long held with regard to having a wife and children. Just how well could I provide, and could I really offer any protection? It seems we're more often victims to whatever a perpetrator wishes to put over on us.
The other stories all have intriguing plot points and characters to dig into. "The Brown Coast" involves a man who, after his father's death, has messed up his life--losing his job and his wife--and who is now trying to rebuild, starting slowly with an aquarium he puts into his new home. "Retreat" involves two brothers who haven't, historically, gotten along so well; now adults, the older brother invites the younger to a cabin he's purchased, and the two go hunting together, while the older tries to convince the younger that the cabin land is a good investment. In "Executors of Important Energies" the narrator's stepmom wrangles a way to reunite son and father; unfortunately, the father's mind isn't all there, and it seems more likely that the stepmom is simply dumping Dad on son. In "Leopard" a kid plays hookey from school but still has to deal with the stepdad he can't stand. In "Door in Your Eye" an eighty-two-year-old dad takes up living with his daughter and succumbs to the temptation to visit the hooker who lives across the street. In "Wild America" (perhaps my second favorite in the collection) a teen-aged girl competes with her cousin for affection; each of them want a boy, it seems, only to keep the other one from having him. And each finds herself doing dangerous things with older men in order to garner attention, things she knows she'll likely regret but can't let anyone else know. "On the Show" involves traveling fair workers and customers in an ensemble story.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
On "The Swineherd" by Hans Christian Andersen (1574 words) ****
Andersen has a few fairy tales that work against romantic traditions, but they say quite a bit about relationships--if you've of a cynical sort. In this tale, a prince sends a beautiful princess his greatest gifts, which she spurns. He then takes on the guise of a lowly swineherd and, in exchange for a few baubles, seduces her. Alas, when her virtue is taken, the prince spurns her, because she's sell herself out to such a lowly person for a few gifts. What are we to take from this? That women are materialistic? That men use women and cast them aside? There seems some kind of lesson in the tale about materialism, but it also seems to suggest something about way that we set up standards for others that we ourselves don't really live by. Is the seducer much better than the seduced? Read the tale here and think about it for one's self.
On "The Sea Is My Brother" by Jack Kerouac ***
I heard parts of this early Kerouac novel read in a documentary about the author some twenty years ago when I first became a Kerouac fan and read nearly everything by him that I could get my hands on. I was saddened that this was not available to me or to a wide audience generally. Well, no more. Someone has decided to publish it. Other reviews I've read for this have said it is interesting only because it is Kerouac--a piece of juvenilia that precedes even Town and the City--and would not stand up as a great work on its own; Kerouac himself would have acknowledged so, for he never sought publication for it.
I think, however, that's it actually a passable work of fiction, and it has a lot of the same things going for it that Kerouac's greater works do. I even prefer it to some of Kerouac's late work. Yes, there are faults (the speaking tags are sometimes comical, as if pulled from a thesaurus just to avoid the word "said"). But Kerouac also carries the kind of contagious enthusiasm for life and ideas that makes On the Road and some of those early and midcareer books so compellingly readable. I want to know more about this life Kerouac writes of; I want to be on this adventure with him.
The adventure is one that involves a merchant marine vessel. Wesley is a sailor on leave, one who spends his entire paycheck on a few days of boozing and partying and who is down to his last few pennies. He befriends a gal at a bar, meets up with her friends, and spends the night. One of these friends he meets is Bill Palmer, a teacher at Columbia University. The two go out carousing the next day, and Bill, taken in by Wesley's charm, decides that he wants a life at sea also. He arranges to leave his teaching position, and the two go off to the harbor to sign up for the next merchant vessel going out and to get Bill's passport in order. Wesley blows off a date with the gal he met the night before, a maddeningly typical move by one of those maddeningly popular guys. Various political and philosophical discussions are engaged in at bars as they wait to ship off. And then, Bill gets on the ship--Wesley momentarily disappears to deal with a former flame--and then away they go.
I think, however, that's it actually a passable work of fiction, and it has a lot of the same things going for it that Kerouac's greater works do. I even prefer it to some of Kerouac's late work. Yes, there are faults (the speaking tags are sometimes comical, as if pulled from a thesaurus just to avoid the word "said"). But Kerouac also carries the kind of contagious enthusiasm for life and ideas that makes On the Road and some of those early and midcareer books so compellingly readable. I want to know more about this life Kerouac writes of; I want to be on this adventure with him.
The adventure is one that involves a merchant marine vessel. Wesley is a sailor on leave, one who spends his entire paycheck on a few days of boozing and partying and who is down to his last few pennies. He befriends a gal at a bar, meets up with her friends, and spends the night. One of these friends he meets is Bill Palmer, a teacher at Columbia University. The two go out carousing the next day, and Bill, taken in by Wesley's charm, decides that he wants a life at sea also. He arranges to leave his teaching position, and the two go off to the harbor to sign up for the next merchant vessel going out and to get Bill's passport in order. Wesley blows off a date with the gal he met the night before, a maddeningly typical move by one of those maddeningly popular guys. Various political and philosophical discussions are engaged in at bars as they wait to ship off. And then, Bill gets on the ship--Wesley momentarily disappears to deal with a former flame--and then away they go.
This plot summary perhaps shows why Kerouac's work is so difficult to adapt to screen; the pleasure is in the joy of life more than in finding out the next plot twist.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
On "The Only" by Courtney Elizabeth Mauk (4233 words) ****
Lynne is a hotel maid with something of a love for other people's lives--or more specifically, for what they leave behind. She's also one to love the men who get left behind, men like Benny, who has a wrap sheet and a reputation that should warn Lynne to stay away. But as with the hotel guests whose lives she peaks into and sometimes steals from, Lynne is about to go burrowing right along--and straight into trouble (and more trouble and more). Read the story here at the Superstition Review.
On "True Colors" by Michelle D. Argyle **
This collection of stories, poems, and general prose sparkles at times with language I wish I were capable of. At other times, lines and material seems fairly pat (stock situations we expect: sick moms, broken couples). Still other material seems the result of writing exercises that don't, for me, quite pan out. Still, the book in general serves as a good introduction to Argyle's work.
My favorite piece in the work is a story called "The Threshold," which recounts how one man sets out to steal his friend's girlfriend. The metaphors in this story are very obvious, but they're masterfully done.
The entire collection is available at Michelle D. Argyle's site here.
My favorite piece in the work is a story called "The Threshold," which recounts how one man sets out to steal his friend's girlfriend. The metaphors in this story are very obvious, but they're masterfully done.
The entire collection is available at Michelle D. Argyle's site here.
Friday, June 7, 2013
On "Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage" by Seanan McGuire (4440 words) ***
When I was in junior high, my class read a book in which a boy found a secret passage to another world. I don't remember the name of that book, but I remember finding the work absolutely fascinating. Such fantasy doesn't appeal much to me now, but McGuire's tale is one that hints at why. There is a kind of sadness that comes with it. Read the story here at Fantasy Magazine.
On "The Worst Journey in the World" by Apsley Cherry-Garrard ***
This personal account of Robert Falcon Scott's trip to the South Pole includes a full rendering of the journey, including the years in Antarctica spent preparing for what would eventually prove to be a disastrous (and in some ways futile trip). Cherry-Garrard quotes extensively from the diaries of those involved in the expedition, including his own, so in a sense, one gets a more well-rounded version of the events than one would get from simply reading Scott's journal or the diary of one of the others involved.
That said, this is not a book I'd have picked up on my own (it was recommended reading from a friend), and I doubt I'd have stuck with it if I were so utterly stubborn in that regard. As with so many books, the early portions are slow going, and the most interesting passages for me were those that had to do with the Scott's eventual end.
That's not to say that there aren't interesting sections along the way. Discussions of the entertainment among the various expeditioners was interesting, as was in particular a trip to visit the birthing grounds of the emperor penguin in quest of an egg. That trip would prove to be a dangerous one also, and as Cherry-Garrard humorously explains it, the egg would hardly be appreciated by the scientists back in Britain. (I felt a bit sad for the penguins, who work so hard to guard those eggs for a season.)
There are accounts of diet and accounts of animals brought with them (ponies, dogs, mules). In one exciting passage, the men find themselves stranded on a piece of ice that has broken free from the mainland, along with their horses. They jump ocean to get back to land, but some of the horses remain stranded, and against Scott's advice, they go to rescue them. Unfortunately, not all the horses make it, falling into the ocean rather than crossing the divide (even as one horse is desperately tugged from the water--I can only imagine what that would have been like).
The temperature seems unfathomable throughout. It seems disastrous in one moment when temperatures actually go above freezing, resulting in much melting and difficulty sledding.
But the most engaging passages are devoted to Scott's last journey, must of that quoted from his diary. Cherry-Garrard knows a hero, and he does not hold back on the hagiography. And here, somehow, it kind of works. Perhaps, part of what makes it work is the tragic element of the whole trip, for Scott was beaten to the pole by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen by about a month. Certainly, Scott's group did a lot of scientific work that Amundsen didn't do, but still, to not even be "first" and to lose one's life for it, that is truly sad. And it's probably also why Scott is remembered more than Amundsen.
That said, this is not a book I'd have picked up on my own (it was recommended reading from a friend), and I doubt I'd have stuck with it if I were so utterly stubborn in that regard. As with so many books, the early portions are slow going, and the most interesting passages for me were those that had to do with the Scott's eventual end.
That's not to say that there aren't interesting sections along the way. Discussions of the entertainment among the various expeditioners was interesting, as was in particular a trip to visit the birthing grounds of the emperor penguin in quest of an egg. That trip would prove to be a dangerous one also, and as Cherry-Garrard humorously explains it, the egg would hardly be appreciated by the scientists back in Britain. (I felt a bit sad for the penguins, who work so hard to guard those eggs for a season.)
There are accounts of diet and accounts of animals brought with them (ponies, dogs, mules). In one exciting passage, the men find themselves stranded on a piece of ice that has broken free from the mainland, along with their horses. They jump ocean to get back to land, but some of the horses remain stranded, and against Scott's advice, they go to rescue them. Unfortunately, not all the horses make it, falling into the ocean rather than crossing the divide (even as one horse is desperately tugged from the water--I can only imagine what that would have been like).
The temperature seems unfathomable throughout. It seems disastrous in one moment when temperatures actually go above freezing, resulting in much melting and difficulty sledding.
But the most engaging passages are devoted to Scott's last journey, must of that quoted from his diary. Cherry-Garrard knows a hero, and he does not hold back on the hagiography. And here, somehow, it kind of works. Perhaps, part of what makes it work is the tragic element of the whole trip, for Scott was beaten to the pole by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen by about a month. Certainly, Scott's group did a lot of scientific work that Amundsen didn't do, but still, to not even be "first" and to lose one's life for it, that is truly sad. And it's probably also why Scott is remembered more than Amundsen.
The book can be downloaded in a number of formats here.
Monday, June 3, 2013
On "Gasoline Caroline" by Zana Previti (2657 words) ****
I'm not sure if Gasoline Caroline is real--by that I mean the character, not the story. And that's what makes this piece of fantasy work so well. This is "not a story about grief," the narrator tells us. Don't believe her. It's about trying to live again--by performing self-destructive acts. Our character doesn't so much recover as descend further into the madness that has assaulted her, but it's a love song nevertheless. Read the story here at Tinge.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
On "The Wild Swans" by Hans Christian Anderson (6308 words) ****
The big surprise to me is that this, so far as I know, is not a movie, no not even an animated one. It seems perfect for retelling in that format. As with so many of the tales we know, there is a bad stepmom. This wicked stepmom sends a princess scurrying from her castle, as well as the princesses eleven brothers, who she consigns to being swans during the daylight hours. Luckily, the princess meets her brothers one day in the forest and through this reacquaintance is able to change the lives of them all. But before then, other antics include a flight across the ocean on the wings of the swans, a kidnapping, and a marriage to be consummated against the princess's will (mostly because she's more interested in breaking the spell on her brothers). All comes out well in the end, except Andersen sort of leaves the wicked stepmom in her place. Read the tale here.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
On "Your Response Should Be in the Form of a Question" by Alex Luft (3818 words) *****
Here's a story that is fairly up front about what it is: a story. Or not. It also claims that it won't do a lot of things that a story does, which lends credence to the idea that it's not really a story. It's a story about a story. It's enough of a metafiction piece to get under a reader's nerves and certainly to keep readers distant from the characters themselves in what would usually be a daunting situation (a couple working on a baby, the husband having just lost on Jeopardy!, their only means to pay for the technology needed to make a baby possible). But Luft's piece is as much about the plot itself as it is about the way that we read stories and what we expect or don't, and in that comes its wonderful twist. Read the story here at the Adirondack Review.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
On "Going Down Like Little Jesus in Sun Hole" by Nathan Blake (2009 words) *****
Wow! Some stories use language in ways you haven't heard before, and some use words not only in new ways but in ways that somehow seem perfectly put together. Limp, wet cigarettes are pulled from between thighs in this story; they're worried away, ash brushing against a chest. And amid all this, someone catches fire, and someone else, and someone else. Love is a dangerous thing. Read the story here at the Collagist.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
On "Somebody’s Sweetheart" by Jennifer A. Powers (926 words) *****
I love the mix of menace and quiet in this piece. Powers places off the two perfectly, so that we're never sure of one of the character's intentions. One moment he's soft, the next possibly not so. Part of fear isn't knowing what's coming but not knowing what's coming. Never take a ride from strangers. Read the story here at Diverse Voices.
On "The Manila Rope" by Veijo Meri ***
This short humorous war novel reminded me of Hasek's The Good Soldier Švejk, particularly in how its obvious attempts at humor didn't really translate to my own intellect. Meri's world is rather slapstick, which doesn't tend to be the kind of comedy I like.
This isn't to say that I began the novel thinking it would be funny. It start with a soldier named Joose finding a rope in the road. He decides to keep it, but because German overseers will likely think he stole it, he decides that he needs to conceal it during his trip home, his temporal leave. So far, the piece seems to be about Finn poverty and German overbearingness. There are tragic, realistic, sad tones.
Joose conceals the rope by having it wrapped around his torso. As such, he appears a very portly man. The rope, however, is too tight, and once Joose boards his train home, he finds himself passing out frequently; others think he is drunk.
The train itself becomes an avenue for storytelling, and various short humorous tales about the arm are told between soldiers as they proceed across the country, Joose growing sicker all along the way.
The humor is a kind of gallows humor, which is most evident in the incidents of trains visiting a particular station. An officer who fails to board on time runs after the train; failing to catch it, he eventually steals a hand trolley and wheels after the train only to be hit by another train down the tracks. He breaks several limbs and is demoted. Later, Joose's train enters the station, and seemingly without a commanding officer, the station master is unable to order the troops back onto the departing train; as a result, the train simply sits in the station, till an angry officer finally shows up to ask why the train still hasn't left.
This also happens to be the station where Joose's home is, so here he disembarks, walking "drunkenly" home, where his wife mistakes him for being sick--very sick. Then she realizes that the lesions around his midsection aren't lesion but a rope, and she cuts it off down the middle. Lot of good sneaking the rope has done. Joose seems to have gotten some bad gangrenely growths in the meantime, so sick, he sits at home listening to visitors tell yet more funny war stories of a gory nature.
This isn't to say that I began the novel thinking it would be funny. It start with a soldier named Joose finding a rope in the road. He decides to keep it, but because German overseers will likely think he stole it, he decides that he needs to conceal it during his trip home, his temporal leave. So far, the piece seems to be about Finn poverty and German overbearingness. There are tragic, realistic, sad tones.
Joose conceals the rope by having it wrapped around his torso. As such, he appears a very portly man. The rope, however, is too tight, and once Joose boards his train home, he finds himself passing out frequently; others think he is drunk.
The train itself becomes an avenue for storytelling, and various short humorous tales about the arm are told between soldiers as they proceed across the country, Joose growing sicker all along the way.
The humor is a kind of gallows humor, which is most evident in the incidents of trains visiting a particular station. An officer who fails to board on time runs after the train; failing to catch it, he eventually steals a hand trolley and wheels after the train only to be hit by another train down the tracks. He breaks several limbs and is demoted. Later, Joose's train enters the station, and seemingly without a commanding officer, the station master is unable to order the troops back onto the departing train; as a result, the train simply sits in the station, till an angry officer finally shows up to ask why the train still hasn't left.
This also happens to be the station where Joose's home is, so here he disembarks, walking "drunkenly" home, where his wife mistakes him for being sick--very sick. Then she realizes that the lesions around his midsection aren't lesion but a rope, and she cuts it off down the middle. Lot of good sneaking the rope has done. Joose seems to have gotten some bad gangrenely growths in the meantime, so sick, he sits at home listening to visitors tell yet more funny war stories of a gory nature.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
On "The Gentrification of the Void" by Sacha Siskonen (1912 words) *****
The editors of Alice Blue Review have a knack for pulling out short pieces with lots of lyricism and a some cool ideas, and this is one of the better ones I've read there of late. The tale is a recounting of a man's eco-tour of the garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. I mean, why not? It might be an incredible and horrible addition to our planet, but if as long as it's there, we might as well turn it into something to market, something to visit and bring back souvenirs from. If my description makes this seem kitschy, that's because in a sense it is, and yet, by the story's end, Siskonen manages to pull off something also "beautiful." Read the tale here at Alice Blue Review.
On "People in the Summer Night" by F. E. Sillanpaa ****
When I was describing this book to a friend last night, he said it sounded like an Ingmar Bergman film. And I suppose, in its focus on everyday life, it is. And were I to focus on the major theme of this work, it would seem hopelessly cliche, because essentially the book is about the cycle of life and death. Ho hum. Let's go read something with a little more pizzazz.
But what makes this work more than its rather perfunctory theme is its execution. And really, isn't that the case with all works of fiction? There really aren't more than seven major themes available, one professor of mine once noted. Unfortunately, I've forgotten what those themes were, but I can totally understand the argument. Human life, even amid constant technological change, still centers around a stable and limited number of concerns.
Sillanpaa chooses to tell his story over the nights surrounding a weekend, mostly Saturday and Sunday. He focuses not on a single character but on a town. I was in some ways reminded of Susan Orlean's Saturday Night early on. During the first thirty pages, all Sillanpaa seems to do is introduce character after character and what they're doing. No plot seems evident. If he weren't such an amazing descriptivist, one would quickly put down the book. So many people thrown at a reader at once means any one of them is hard to follow or to feel much for.
But then, the characters start to settle out, and so does the story. If the first and last thirty pages are each focused on mundane descriptions, the middle one hundred and packed with plot. A young man arrives from out of town to court a young lady, and together with another couple, they rush off to a party. A man's pregnant wife goes to check on a sick cow and ends up in labor, the midwife not to be had and the doctor needing to be fetched. The problem is that that doctor is off on another visit: elsewhere in town one man has stabbed another to death and struggles in vain to bring the man to life. That dead man's wife, meanwhile, dallies with other men in her house, serving them beer and looking out for the husband who will fail to return.
The events don't really come to an end so much as they become subsumed in the general ebb and flow of life itself. These intense moments of love, birth, death, Sillanpaa seems to be saying, fade into the general mundanity of existence.
But what makes this work more than its rather perfunctory theme is its execution. And really, isn't that the case with all works of fiction? There really aren't more than seven major themes available, one professor of mine once noted. Unfortunately, I've forgotten what those themes were, but I can totally understand the argument. Human life, even amid constant technological change, still centers around a stable and limited number of concerns.
Sillanpaa chooses to tell his story over the nights surrounding a weekend, mostly Saturday and Sunday. He focuses not on a single character but on a town. I was in some ways reminded of Susan Orlean's Saturday Night early on. During the first thirty pages, all Sillanpaa seems to do is introduce character after character and what they're doing. No plot seems evident. If he weren't such an amazing descriptivist, one would quickly put down the book. So many people thrown at a reader at once means any one of them is hard to follow or to feel much for.
But then, the characters start to settle out, and so does the story. If the first and last thirty pages are each focused on mundane descriptions, the middle one hundred and packed with plot. A young man arrives from out of town to court a young lady, and together with another couple, they rush off to a party. A man's pregnant wife goes to check on a sick cow and ends up in labor, the midwife not to be had and the doctor needing to be fetched. The problem is that that doctor is off on another visit: elsewhere in town one man has stabbed another to death and struggles in vain to bring the man to life. That dead man's wife, meanwhile, dallies with other men in her house, serving them beer and looking out for the husband who will fail to return.
The events don't really come to an end so much as they become subsumed in the general ebb and flow of life itself. These intense moments of love, birth, death, Sillanpaa seems to be saying, fade into the general mundanity of existence.
Friday, May 10, 2013
On "Un Deux Trois" by Susan Tepper (579 words) *****
Tepper's short tale is a twist on the old doors metaphor/game show/whatever you will. She tells us what is behind each one, asking us to guess the answer to a simple question. The story, if it is such a thing, is somehow mysteriously and unexplainably powerful, which is really the best kind of power a story can have. Read it here at Pure Slush.
On "The Kalevala" by Elias Lonnrot ****
Based loosely on ancient epics and folktales, this Finnish epic poem runs from a creation of sorts to a Christ child of sorts, with all its strange tales in between. It is, so I read in the introduction, really the beginning of Finnish literature, insofar as it was the great epic written at a time when Finland was really coming to its own, pressing for its own national identity. One certainly couldn't do much better--it's a marvelous work. The particular translation I read as well, by Keith Bosley, is a lot of fun. Bosley notes that Finnish poetry is heavily alliterative, more even than Old English poetry. Placing rhyme or metric measures onto the work in translation would be to do a disservice to it, as would be trying to mimic completely the Finnish poetic devices. Instead, he settles on a purely syllabic verse (nine syllables--sometimes five or seven to a line); it seems to work well, especially as lines often repeat, as they would in a rhyming kids' tale (think, for example, of the repetition and refrains in "The Three Little Pigs").
Summing up The Kalevala is difficult, and while I'll try here mostly so that I can one day return to this write-up to refresh my memory, it'll be a sorry recounting. The beauty of the piece is really in the language mixed in with the plot itself, which at times as a bit fuzzy to me.
We start with a kind of creation of sorts, from which springs the old man Vainamoinen. I say "old man," because by the time he gets around to doing anything in the narrative, which is fairly quickly, he is already old in the eyes of others. One of his first acts is to try to find a wife. Unfortunately, in what will become a constant theme for him, the woman, whose father he convinces let him have her, rejects him because he is to old. She chooses, rather, to jump into the sea and kill herself. Vainamoinen builds a boat and goes to sea, and while at sea, finds a mermaid, who turns out to be this woman reincarnated, but he doesn't get the mermaid either.
Enter now the blacksmith Ilmarinen, who goes north to find a woman of his own. After settling in the north country, he goes about his job of forging metal into tools for the people around--and, it seems, of creating the sky. He doesn't get his lady until sometime later, however, when Vainamoinen comes calling. The latter is the better match, the family feels, as Vainamoinen is well off, but the young lady is none to smitten of the idea of being paired with an old man, and so she chooses to marry Ilmarinen.
One more would-be lover yet enters the tale, Lemminkainen. He marries a lady, promising never to go to war if she never runs off to go visiting. The promises, however, are broken on both sides, and Lemminkainen goes off again to find another lady. In the process of trying to woo a lady of the north, he manages to get killed. His mother goes searching for him and, finding him, reconstructs him. He's warned to be more careful, but again he wanders off, this time to Ilmarinen's wedding, where he manages to kill the brother of Ilmarinen's bride. More revenge follows, so Lemminkainen flees his home and wanders a far island for a while, sleeping with various women. When he returns home, finally, after a few years, he finds his home burned.
Ilmarinen, meanwhile, loses his wife to murder. And now the three of them, all sorrowful, Vainamoinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkainen wander toward the northlands to seek a certain vengeance of their own. There, they steal something called the Sampo. They do it by use of a pike's comb--the bones of a great fish that Vainamoinen manages to catch. The music puts the people asleep. But Lemminkainen's desire to sing--Vainamoinen, known for his musical abilities, refuses--wakes a bird who wakes the people of the north, who then come chasing after the three thieves. In vengeance, the hag, the northern queen, steals the sun and moon, which the three then go in search of. Ilmarinen tries to forge a new moon and sun, then tools to help Vainamoinen free them, but the hag of the north senses her eventual likely loss and frees them of her own accord.
The story of these men ends there and turns toward the birth of a young child to a virgin, who has eaten a berry that has made her pregnant. Vainamoinen's days are noted as being numbered. The narrator bard exhorts others to join his song and write yet other epics, setting up the Finns for yet more literature.
Summing up The Kalevala is difficult, and while I'll try here mostly so that I can one day return to this write-up to refresh my memory, it'll be a sorry recounting. The beauty of the piece is really in the language mixed in with the plot itself, which at times as a bit fuzzy to me.
We start with a kind of creation of sorts, from which springs the old man Vainamoinen. I say "old man," because by the time he gets around to doing anything in the narrative, which is fairly quickly, he is already old in the eyes of others. One of his first acts is to try to find a wife. Unfortunately, in what will become a constant theme for him, the woman, whose father he convinces let him have her, rejects him because he is to old. She chooses, rather, to jump into the sea and kill herself. Vainamoinen builds a boat and goes to sea, and while at sea, finds a mermaid, who turns out to be this woman reincarnated, but he doesn't get the mermaid either.
Enter now the blacksmith Ilmarinen, who goes north to find a woman of his own. After settling in the north country, he goes about his job of forging metal into tools for the people around--and, it seems, of creating the sky. He doesn't get his lady until sometime later, however, when Vainamoinen comes calling. The latter is the better match, the family feels, as Vainamoinen is well off, but the young lady is none to smitten of the idea of being paired with an old man, and so she chooses to marry Ilmarinen.
One more would-be lover yet enters the tale, Lemminkainen. He marries a lady, promising never to go to war if she never runs off to go visiting. The promises, however, are broken on both sides, and Lemminkainen goes off again to find another lady. In the process of trying to woo a lady of the north, he manages to get killed. His mother goes searching for him and, finding him, reconstructs him. He's warned to be more careful, but again he wanders off, this time to Ilmarinen's wedding, where he manages to kill the brother of Ilmarinen's bride. More revenge follows, so Lemminkainen flees his home and wanders a far island for a while, sleeping with various women. When he returns home, finally, after a few years, he finds his home burned.
Ilmarinen, meanwhile, loses his wife to murder. And now the three of them, all sorrowful, Vainamoinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkainen wander toward the northlands to seek a certain vengeance of their own. There, they steal something called the Sampo. They do it by use of a pike's comb--the bones of a great fish that Vainamoinen manages to catch. The music puts the people asleep. But Lemminkainen's desire to sing--Vainamoinen, known for his musical abilities, refuses--wakes a bird who wakes the people of the north, who then come chasing after the three thieves. In vengeance, the hag, the northern queen, steals the sun and moon, which the three then go in search of. Ilmarinen tries to forge a new moon and sun, then tools to help Vainamoinen free them, but the hag of the north senses her eventual likely loss and frees them of her own accord.
The story of these men ends there and turns toward the birth of a young child to a virgin, who has eaten a berry that has made her pregnant. Vainamoinen's days are noted as being numbered. The narrator bard exhorts others to join his song and write yet other epics, setting up the Finns for yet more literature.
Monday, May 6, 2013
On "House of Halls" by Joe Aguilar (1736 words) *****
Wow! That was my reaction as I read this story, which is not to say there isn't more to say. Told in three chunks, Aguilar's story has the kind of surreal feel of a Borges piece. The House of Halls is just that, a house made entirely of corridors. It costs money to visit this house, and Aguilar's going to let us in. That's the first part. More description and travelogue than story, but such a fascinating place that we don't care much that there's not a heavy plot, or at least I didn't. The next section is a meditation on meaning and metaphor, a poem really, with its seeming imperative: don't think too hard. And finally, in the last section, we come to the story that's going to tie these things together, a love tale or not. Read the piece here at Web Conjuctions.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
On "I Looked for You, I Called Your Name" by Laura van den Berg (6450 words) *****
This is the second story of van den Berg's I've read, the first being a tale in One Story. I can see why she's something of a sensation. She's a master of virtually every aspect of a a well-written piece: interesting plot, full characters and setting, and wonderfully surprising sentences.
You know you're in for strangeness when the author opens with "The first thing that went wrong was the emergency landing." We don't tend to think of emergency landings as the beginning of troubles but rather than end. But then, this is a narrator whose view of the world is decidedly negative and whose experiences certainly compel negativity. She may survive, but how well?
There's a moment in the tale when the narrator talks of how only her husband and she can see the twist in her nose, and it's enough to show how this relationship is one built on a certain degree of pretense and uncertainty. Is the narrator predisposed to viewing her husband as less than desired and lets that color the rest of her life, or is she simply one who is predisposed to seeing everything as less than desired? Decide for yourself here at Tinge.
You know you're in for strangeness when the author opens with "The first thing that went wrong was the emergency landing." We don't tend to think of emergency landings as the beginning of troubles but rather than end. But then, this is a narrator whose view of the world is decidedly negative and whose experiences certainly compel negativity. She may survive, but how well?
There's a moment in the tale when the narrator talks of how only her husband and she can see the twist in her nose, and it's enough to show how this relationship is one built on a certain degree of pretense and uncertainty. Is the narrator predisposed to viewing her husband as less than desired and lets that color the rest of her life, or is she simply one who is predisposed to seeing everything as less than desired? Decide for yourself here at Tinge.
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