On "My Sweet Warrior" by David Erlewine (517 words) ****

I was never one of the tough guys. In fact, I remember being locked out of school-yard football games by friends worried I'd get hurt. I guess the fact that people actually looked out for me was good, rather than taking opportunity to beat me up. I learned to be gracious via my parents. I went to a private school where beatings weren't so common. I value all those things.

And yet, what if I had been shown how to stand up for myself better? What would I have come to? What would my childhood have been like? Perhaps it would have been like that of the kid in this story. If so, I don't think I missed out on much. This is one deluded, wrong-headed parent, but one who clearly loves his kid all the same, and in that is the stories sad humor. Read it here at Word Riot.

On "Wants What It Wants" by Bram Shay (978 words) ***

I featured this short piece by Bram Shay largely for its description of a bar. Setting is everything here--a place where women come to scout each other out, and more pitifully men come to simply watch. Different from the way one might expect a setting to be so effective, Shay doesn't do it so much in the description of the place (though that is there), but in the description of the kind of people who are in this place and the things going on. Truly, the narrators' are observers. Read the story here at SFWP.

On "Shallow Grave" by Julie Innis (1993 words) ****

Innis's story begins right where you want your short stories to start--at a moment too weird not to be further explained. Imagine a body found in your back yard--a fresh body. What would you do? How would you react? What's nice here is that Innis tells this sad story in quiet terms. The Sunday paper quality of the back story becomes the everyday for the couple who own the house. And we get a view of the couple that says much about who they are, people not so much able to talk to one another any more, and who don't even know exactly how to talk to one another about what just happened to them. Read the story here at the Northville Review.

On "Squandering the Blue" by Kate Braverman *****

Braverman's first collection of stories explores the lives of women overcoming drug and alcohol addictions (or giving into them). It explores colors--especially blue. And it explores language, as Braverman's work always does. Of the three books I've read of Braverman's, this one remains my favorite, in part because of the unity of theme, in part because when she hits her stride, the stories sting.

Sure, there are places where Braverman seems almost to get carried away with language, overwrought sections that probably could have been toned back. Her own obsessions are on display in reference to the turn of the millennium, which she mentions in poetic zeal numerous times. And some dialogue is incredibly pretentious, though in ways that make for interesting reading (a woman, in the midst of a nervous breakdown, in "Desert Blues," references theories of poetry and philosophy, and her friend knows exactly what she's talking about--clearly, this is a kind of obsession that afflicts both of these women).

However, the turns of phrase are largely extraordinary. A writer can easily put down lines that simply tell us what someone did or the fact that someone said something, but with Braverman, each line is like an emerald hacked from the center of a poem and then sanded for display, and we're not just talking ten pages of this--we're talking a couple of hundred pages. That's some dense prose, and some beautiful prose. One of my favorite sections of writing comes at the end of a story called "Falling in October," which becomes largely a rant on history that will make one want to sing--or to write something similar.

The best stories in the collection, however, manage to balance the need for story with Braverman's linguistic strengths. There are reasons that "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta" gets anthologized so often. It has a narrative line, a consistent extended metaphor (that is easy to teach), and a whole lot of energy. The title story of the collection has also long been a favorite of mine, a tale about a girl growing up with an alcoholic mother. But of particular note this time around was a story called "Temporary Light." In it, a woman who has recently overcome an addiction problem suffers from the fallout of her previous life--and it is heartbreaking. She's lost everything, even as she has finally found the strength to start over.

Family also plays a large role in the collection. The affecting "Naming Names" explores the world of a kid growing up in an apartment, where other kids with sick or missing dads live and where residence means embarrassment at a high-class school. "Over the Hill" and "Points of Decision" reflect on a woman's attempts to break away from a abusive and manipulative husband. The families here are not healthy, but the people inside the stories are, by and large, survivors.

On "I Am Going to Cook a Quiche in My Easy-Bake Oven And You Are Going to Like It" by Roxane Gay (557 words) *****

This short piece is deceptive and fun. It works that deception by providing us a list of details that lead us in one direction while also leading us in another--and that's also what makes the piece fun, and funny. This is also a story told in the future tense, which is something one doesn't see often (in fact, I don't think I'd ever seen it until I wrote such a story myself a few years ago). Here, that future tense is effective because it is also a mood: "will" is "willing," a set of commands. And that adds to the humor as well--these commands, merged with the aura of romance. The childlike and the romantic, the dictatorial and the loving, all blended into one in one fantastic little spiced pie you can read here at McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

On "13 Halloweens" by Michael K. White (4674 words) *****

So one of my favorite online stories is back online and available. Credit the folks at Blue Print Review for reposting it. The story is essentially a recounting of anecdotes--thirteen of them--about Halloweens past. The writing is good and helps keep one engaged, but the stories at first seem simply to be an inventive list. Like many a good story built in this way, however, White has a doozy of an ending in store for you, where all those anecdotes are brought together, and suddenly the whole thing coheres. Read the story here at Blue Print Review.

On "Bare-Faced Messiah" by Russell Miller *****

This biography of L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer, the author of Dianetics, and the found of the Church of Scientology is an absolutely fascinating read, as fascinating as Hubbard himself was. I've never had a desire to read Hubbard's writings, and I still don't. But growing up, I'd have had hard time not being aware of him. Commercials for Dianetics ran on the television. Bridge Publications, the publishing unit responsible for printing many of Hubbard's books, used to send me information on his book when I worked as a book buyer, and they called me at home, inviting me to lectures. I was young. I knew Hubbard was important somehow, but I didn't know how, and I wasn't at all drawn to attend any sort of lecture or party associated with him. Then there are the bookstores, which one can still find in some big cities, especially in Southern California, where I grew up. And there are the celebrities that are Scientologists.

So why read a book on L. Ron Hubbard? A few years ago, reading Mike Davis's City of Quartz, I became fascinated by an anecdote Davis shared about a personality very important in my hometown of Pasadena that involved Hubbard. At that point, I was like, I need to read that book. The problem: It was out of print. Thankfully, someone opted to make it available online, which is how I've finally been able to read it.

Miller's text essentially compares one man (the legend) with another (the "real"). The legend is of Hubbard's own creation--having grown up among Indians, touring Asia as a teen, the first casualty of World War II and a lone survivor from the attack on Pearl Harbor, a rocket scientist, a nuclear arms expert, and a man of many lives before that, going back trillions of years. Yet the made-up Hubbard, so far-fetched as he is, is actually, to me less interesting than the person that Miller presents us. There are no Indians; the travels in Asia as a teen are brief and not full of heroics; the World War II service is spotty (and actually quite funny).

Hubbard, in Miller's account, is a man with an active imagination who increasingly lives in that fantasy world--and gets others to live in it with him. In World War II, he does desk work. Given a chance finally to oversee a ship, he finds submarines off the coast of Oregon and has the crew fire off all of the ship's depth charges, while other ships in the area see nothing. He writes pulp fiction, and then comes up with the idea of writing a philosophical treatise regarding how to find peace. Somehow, this work, Dianetics, ends up on the best-seller list, and a man who was always in hoc before is richer than one could ever imagine. The "auditing" that Dianetics introduces, becomes a 1950s, and not satisfied with that, Hubbard transforms it into the religion that would become scientology. And then he gets even more bizarre. Fighting persecution, he flees to Britain, then to the ocean--that's right, the ocean. He and his followers buy boats and live on ocean liners for years. Finally, he settles in California, where he "disappears." Higher-ups in the church he founds fight for power.

But Hubbard is more than a person with an incredibly varied life. He is a personality to be reckoned with, at least as Miller draws him. He is a storyteller--and a liar. He is a conman that people love, and a man who cares for no one but himself (marrying one woman while still married to another; getting one wife in trouble and then letting her take the wrap by going to prison; "stealing" a man's mistress--as well as the man's personal fortune). And finally, he is a man whose fantasy life eventually becomes his real life, such that he can no longer distinguish between the con he is perpetrating and the reality that is his own being.

One comes away wondering how anyone could follow such a man in a religion. And yet, Miller is not writing from the official Hubbard script, and that is the difference. A spiritualism that might do wonders for a person can make such a person a believer, and then, under that spell, the person comes to see things as Hubbard and his followers see them, and all others who write against the religion are the deluded ones rather than those who live within its sway. As an outsider, I find Miller's account fascinating, but I know also what it is like to be on the inside of a group that outsiders misread and that too makes this a story with a certain hold over me. Maybe it'll hold you too. You can read it, online, here or download it as a pdf here.

On "This Is Me American Style" by Maria Deira (1598 words) ****

Deira calls up a Mexican man here--one who wants, on some level, not to be Mexican, not to be the person he is, wants not to be working in an office, not to be lonely. I'm reminded a little of Oscar Zeta Acosta here if Acosta hadn't decided to become part of the brown revolution, if instead he'd climbed into himself and tried to be Anglo and failed to succeeded. This man wars against himself, which makes his battle against others all the more hopeless. Read the story here at Word Riot.

On "8 Stories I'll Never Tell" by Ashley Cowger (804 words) ***

Cowger's "story," if it is to be called that, is really more a meditation on what is relevant as a story (in that sense, of course, Cowger's story, in breaking the rules of storytelling--no substantial plot--breaks them twice: choosing subjects that supposedly don't amount to worth of storytelling). I'm not sure that I agree with Cowger's analysis, that there are no stories here, but I understand the thinking. Do characters have to change? Most people don't, and much of my own fiction revolves around such people. Such stories, though, can be boring. People at least have to have an opportunity, I suppose--and turn that opportunity down--and many I know would say it has to the "last" opportunity, so that the story has resonance. That's tricky, though, telling a story without change, or even without a long-standing last chance for change, but in a way that it isn't boring. But then, I don't know that Cowger is saying that such stories aren't for telling--her very introduction of the subject suggests that there should be no limits on what constitutes the subject of a story. Hers is a compelling piece, no matter. Read the full explanation here at the Pedestal Magazine.

On "Look Me in the Eye" by Suzanne Nielsen (506 words) ***

There's a scene in Full Metal Jacket where a character who has gone from a full screw-up to a clean-cut, amazing solider flips. Things seem fine, and then suddenly he's using his gun in ways you don't want to see repeated. Nielsen's story does a similar thing, focusing on such a moment, and drawing us into its full absurdity and ultimately sadness. Read it here at Battered Suitcase.

On "Rebellion" by Thomas McConnell (1096 words) ***

This short story hints at the horror that can sometimes subsume McConnell's fiction. In it, a mother--in the midst of a civil war--works to gather what she can to save her family. We're not quite sure what she's working for until a good chunk of the way into the story, and then things just go downhill from there. Read the story here at Cortland Review.

On "A Picture Book of Hell and Other Landscapes" by Thomas McConnell **

McConnel's Picture Book is a set of stories in three parts. The first group of stories focuses largely on the past--and on how it affects our present. Notable within this section is the title story "A Picture Book of Hell." The tale is one about a man who comes back from fighting in the Great War. Like the characters in various contemporary movies who return from fighting in Vietnam or Iraq, the soldier come home has difficulty adjusting again to civilian life--the horrors he's seen are too great deal with and too great to express. In this mix is the soldier's niece, who is curious to know about the war and who frequently questions her knowing uncle. None of this bares much fruition, however, as the uncle descends into madness. The stories in this section demonstrate McConnell's great command of the language, as do many of those in the last section.

The last section of the book seems the most random, though a good number of them circle around the theme of death. In readers watch as a homeless man nears his death and as another man takes his spot, as a man goes to visit a prostitute, as a body of men fights a fire, as people attend wakes and funerals (two stories), and as men ride in a bus and discuss what death and life mean. This section seems, in some respects, to be the most philosophical, with some stories feeling almost plotless, most focused on ideas.

The middle section of the book is the one I enjoyed most. Here McConnell's characters come to life and the stories seem full fledged. The language, while not as wrought as in the other two sections, seems more in keeping with the relatively simply first-person narrators. This section, called "Diptych" consists of just two stories, about two friends, one from each friend's point of view. One is a sensitive thinker nicknamed Aquinas, who lives alone in the woods in the first story and whose primary habit is reading. He falls for girls hard and with little success. Brock, his friend, is his opposite. Fresh from the army, Brock is action not thought, not reading. He carries girls away like free mints offered at the end of a visit to a restaurant--they're great to enjoy but never does one hold any particular unique hold over him. And he has a drinking problem, one that threatens often to get him into trouble. In the first story, Brock, after sending a letter noting that he's out of the army, comes to visit Aquinas, and the two go out to have drinks and to find some girls, who they take into the woods to make out with. Typical of Brock, when bored, he's up and out. Aquinas expects never to see him again. In the second story, Brock receives a letter from Aquinas, only the circumstances have changed much. Aquinas, sunk into a deep depression, has killed himself, and not it's Brock's turn to consider what it means when a friend leaves. I could have read eight more stories about these characters, so well did McConnell draw them--these are the two stories I'll remember from the collection.

On "What You Say, What Is Done to You" by Roxane Gay (304 words) ***

What's to be made of a reputation? We do one silly thing--or say one silly thing--and, especially in grade school, that becomes us. I remember, once, talking about space, and some kids misunderstood me and thought what I'd said stupid, and thereafter for a short while I was called "Space." The reputation--and the nickname--didn't hold. But it does for others.

Gay's story is about the reputations that do hold. One is an accident. The other something much more sinister. But what really happened? It doesn't much matter. Read the story here at LitNImage.

On "A Little Peace" by Jack Swenson (361 words) ****

Swenson's little piece pulls the whole world in. Start with a couple, a relationship that isn't exactly going uphill, all the attendant fights. Now, bring into that the big spill of the wars raging outside. I think of the storm raging outside in one of Raymond Carver's stories, mirroring the trouble inside. Here, Swenson switches it around to full effect. Read it here at Staccato.

On "Alone in America" by Louise Bernikow ***

Bernikow's exploration of loneliness in the United States is a difficult one to summarize, in large part because it isn't a prescriptive set of solutions nor a theoretical explanation of causes. Rather, it's a collection of anecdotes, a kind of anthropological study of different communities where loneliness exists: among single men, among single women, among the married, among youths, among the old, among people without jobs, among people with jobs. Each, Bernikow shows, has various means--mostly unsatisfying--of dealing with this loneliness: drugs, visits to bars, drinking, working even harder, delving into family life more.

Bernikow suggests that loneliness is something that we don't like to talk about, that there is a stigma to it, a fear that talking about it, that taking in one who is lonely, will perhaps draws us further into that world of loneliness ourselves. I'm not sure I buy this. Perhaps, my own loneliness tends to provide me with a certain amout of sympathy for such folk--as long as they don't become too smothering in the desire for a companion. Perhaps that's what Bernikow is talking of, but I'm not really sure.

Bernikow's last chapter does seem to offer some possibilities of solutions. At times, she implies the nuclear family isn't enough--too much is expected from such a small group, especially in light of economic turmoil. Rather, "communities" seem to solve this problem, whether it be a group of retired musicians who forge a community orchestra or gay men who make a town mostly their own. But here too there seem to be potential problems. A community is only good insofar as one feels part of it. The prospect of AIDS, just beginning to get notice at the time of Bernikow's writing, had potentially ushered some hushed worries into the community that did not allow those who were victims to share themselves. The disconnectedness a straight couple might feel that might cause them to split was replaced with a smothering a gay couple might feel that might cause them to split.

Loneliness seems something inherent in the human experience, because we are all in separate bodies, all in separate minds. It waxes and wains. A weekend spent with old friends makes us feel part of a unit; months spent with them makes us feel like we're not really understood, like we want to be out with others who might understand better. Bernikow's book, written in the 1980s, doesn't take up the issues of online communities--that odd juxtaposition of belonging and separateness that comes when one stares across a group with common interests or problems or values separated by cables and screens. Nevertheless, as an exploration of a problem Bernikow's book poses the issue in full.

On "Ghost Story" by John Sweet (240 words) ***

What is a ghost? Is it this thing we call memory, this thing we call the past? Is it feelings we get, standing at a bedroom door? Is it something we can't quite put our senses to? Is it something that haunts? Is it all of these things? Is it a story, just like this, here, at Staccato?

On "Dependents" by Sean Ennis (3036 words) *****

This isn't a story that zings plot. It's a story that rather sneaks up on a reader, a collection of observations. The situation is rather unextraordinary. New parents go to a party across the street. There, we meet some interesting people, including a man who is AWOL.

I have a story also about AWOL soldiers and patriotic holiday weekends, something based on a real life incident in my early twenties. It's one of my favorites, but now that I've read Ennis's version of such a tale, my own slow-burn of a story seems ridiculously long and unexceptional (its forty-plus-page length is likely one thing that will keep it from ever finding a home in a journal). His piece is one-third the size and full of zingers and observations that punch a person between the eyes (i.e., in the head, in the brain); his piece makes you sit up and pay attention. The narrator realizes that women who have given birth have a swagger men cannot match without surviving some kind of aerial crash. The writing is beautiful. And by the end, you realize that this is a story parents struggling to understand their new child, struggling to stay the course and not go AWOL, struggling to believe they're up for all that is to come, and somehow you realize that this is every parents' story. Read it here at Fifty-Two Stories.

On "The Last Chicken in America" by Ellen Litman ***

"A Novel in Stories," the collection's title page says. I guess that depends on one's definition of the novel. More and more, it seems like the description denoted on this title page is an excuse to try to sell something as a novel rather than a collection, because the former will sell and the latter won't. For me, a novel develops plot wise. It may not even necessarily develop chronologically, but it will develop in some way. I didn't get that feeling from Litman's book.

What her book certainly is is a short story cycle, a set of stories all set around the same community, much like Joyce's Dublin. Litman's community is a place called Squirrel Hill, a Russian immigrant community, and each story is about such people. I admit, whether this is a novel or a story cylce doesn't much matter to me; I'm actually more a fan of the latter than the former, so adding the novel appelation does more a disservice for me than sell it. Litman's collection does what great short story cycles do--it shows us a community from different angles and perspectives, letting us learn all about these people and this place.

The difficulty I had with these stories is that they--and many of the characters--ran together for me. Too much of the same voice, I couldn't keep one Russian name separate from another, one character apart from another.

But save that, I did enjoy the collection, more even than I thought necessarily thought I would. I was moved to read it largely by other reviews (good reviews), but I was almost desiring not to given that the subject matter didn't sound compelling. Overall, I'm glad I picked it up. I'm just having a hard time saying exactly what I just completed.

The most moving story for me in this collection is the second to last, "About Kamyshinskiy." It recounts love stories, three of them, simultaneously--how love bursts on to the scene, and how it simply bursts. This is one of those stories whose power sneaks up on you--or at least it was for me. The way that Litman structures it, we become as curious about Kamyshinskiy as his neighbors, even if we are not as shocked by his budding love, since we know of it from the start. What we are shocked by is something else, something Litman holds back from us until it's almost too late, and it is what makes the story so sad, so compelling, so terrible (and I mean that in the most gloriously tragic way).

Other stories in the collection recount tales of a teen girl taking up with a young man her parents like but who she doesn't like and who proves to be something less than his parents think he is; a couple who takes English classes together and who keep in contact with a senile woman they met on the journey to America; a young girl who babysits for a rich woman who doesn't seem to need a babysitter (except to keep her from being lonely, given that her rich husband has little interest in her); a girl who sleeps around a lot; a pair of dancers who come to stay with a couple; a girl learning to drive; and a woman who returns home to Squirrel Hill for a wedding.

A couple of the more intriguing stories involve contrasts between past and present. In one, a man flirts with having an affair with a fellow Russian immigrant in his office. Of note here is how he thinking constantly of a former girlfriend, of how these relationships become his means to return to the Russia--and the girl--he left. The other story is of a girl who excels in Russian club as long as she is willing to be absolutely devoted to Russia. Her teacher is a man with very strong views on this subject, very strong views on Russia itself, unable to move on to a life in America. How much does an immigrant keep of the old home, and how much does the immigrant become part of America? This seems to be one of the main questions Litman is exploring. In the aforementioned wedding story, for example, the girl, Masha, who shows up in several of the stories, wrestles with this question intensely, having fled her Russian immigrant home only to find her new almost wholly American life possibly lacking. Though she lives as if becoming American is more important, she spends her time studying Russian. Subconsciously, she seems drawn to the old world. In the end, she seems unsatisfied with either world--and wants both.

On "On-Ramp" by John Bruce (355 words) ***

What can we say of on-ramps? They are places where people come together--or rather cars. They are places of stress, as we come together, because there's always the chance of an accident, of that coming together creating a crash. Bruce's story is about a different kind of coming together, a boy and a girl. Or is it? Read the story here at Staccato.

On "Publish Me" by Eric Blanchard, "Classified #10" by Benjamin C. Krause, and "My Turn" by Erin Murphy ****

"Publish Me" is another poem resting on a single metaphor used quite adroitly--in this case, a sexual being. Nice, funny thoughts, this one puts into play. Read the poem here at Oak Bend Review.

Years ago, a teacher of mine had us write wanted ads. It was an interesting exercise, but few of ours were as interesting as hers. We were, by nature, much closer to beginners. Mine, I'm sure was overwrought, attempting for something big. And yet, simple is often better. Krause's "Classified #10" does just that--keeps to the basics and suggests something profound and wonderful and sad. Read the poem here at Boston Literary Magazine.

Erin Murphy's "My Turn" spins off another poem--her turn at doing Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gently," and a fantastic turn it is. I don't know if I'll ever savor candy without thinking of this poem from here on. Read it here, also at Boston Literary Magazine.