"Scheherazade" by Huruki Murakami (October 13, 2014, The New Yorker)

I really hoped I would be writing this post in observation of Huruki Murakami winning the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature.  Now that that has not happened, I am posting on his just published story in the current issue of The New Yorker in order to simply journalise my reading of it and to let my readers know they can read the story for free, for a while, on the webpage of The New Yorker.

Set in an unspecified locale, it is the story of a man named Hebara and a thirty five year old woman he calls Scheherazade who regularly visits him, brings him food and books. He seems to be in a situation kind of like house arrest or maybe he simply fears to leave his apartment.  It is purely a business arrangement and does not feel sleazy.  The woman is married with children and a husband.  She is past her prime in looks but still attractive.  She shops for Hebara and visits his apartment every few days.  She always has sex with him. She always inspects the condom to be sure he completed and when on her period she uses her hand.    It is pretty much part of her job.  She is not quite a prostitute, in fact we don't know what to call her.  The man does not give her cash but clearly she is getting paid.  Maybe she feels if she does not have sex with him she will be dismissed.  She does not hate it, just kind of all business.  

After sex, she tells him a story, just like the fabled Scherezade did.  He always wants her back to hear the next story.   One day she tells him a real story about her teenage years that was really fascinating.

"Scherazade" just begins and ends in the midst of a social setting we do not really understand.  Maybe in part it is a male fantasy of no strings sex.  It was a lot of fun to read.

You can read the story here

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/scheherazade-3

Mel u

"The Money" by Junot Diaz (from The New Yorker, June 11, 2011)

My Posts on Junot Diaz

I offer my great thanks to Max u for the gift of a subscription to The New Yorker which allowed me to read this story.

"The Money" is the briefest short story by Junot Diaz I have so far read.  It is also the first one that does not focus mostly on young Dominican men,living in New York or New Jersey, endlessly in search of women.  It can be read in just a few minutes.

The story is told by a young, maybe early adolescent boy living with his parents and five siblings in an apartment in a rough neighborhood.  His dad works on and off as a fork lift operator.  Like lots of immigrants, his mother sends money back home when she can.  The plot action begins when the family returns from vacation to find the money the mother saved to send home stolen.

This is a decent work.  It is not as exciting as his more r rated stories but for sure worth reading. 

It can be found here. 

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/06/13/the-money

Mel u

"Class Portrait" by Tobias Wolff (January 6, 2003, in The New Yorker)

I offer my great thanks to Max u for the gift of a New Yorker subscription which made it possible for me to read "Class Pictures" by Tobias Wolff.

"Class Pictures" is my first exposure to the work of a very distinqushed writer, Tobias Wolff (1945, Birmingham, Alabama, U S A).   The story is set in a very elite  private school that caters to the high school age sons of wealthy  Americans.  The time is around 1960.  Most of the students will go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.  Wolff does a fine  job of giving us a feel for the school.  The boys are quite competitive both in academic achievement and in letting others know of the wealth of their family.

Every year the school invites a famous writer to read his work and spend time with the students.  Each  year there is a writing contest among the senior class boys and the winner gets a private meeting with the visiting writer.  Robert Frost is the writer this year and all of the literary leaning boys have submitted poems for the contest.   I will leave the rest of the plot unspoiled.

I enjoyed reading this story.

It can be found here.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/01/06/class-picture-2

"Wildwood" by Junot Diaz (from The New Yorker, June 11, 2007)

My Posts on Junot Diaz

My great thanks to Max u for the gift of a New Yorker subscription that made it possible for me to read "Wildwood" by Junot Diaz.

Most of Junot Diaz's stories focus on young Domican men living in New York, New Jersey or Santo Domingo.  Their biggest preoccupation in life is finding women.  They are fixated on bodies with a woman with a large well shaped posterior being the biggest prize.   It is all about being macho while in most cases being very devoted to and near dominated by their mothers.  "Wildwood", named for a city in New Jersey, is very refreshingly told from the point of view of a teen aged girl, giving us an insight into how the prey feels about the hunter.

The narrator lives with her mother and younger brother.  Her mother works three jobs to support them and afford a house. The father deserted the mother after three years.   The mother is harshly dominating.  In the culture the oldest daughter is supposed to do a lot of the house work.  The mother becomes increasingly abusive and the daughter longs to run away.  She begins become sexually active and we know the patterns of abuse and abandonment will continue.

There is a great plot in the story which I will leave unspoiled.

You can read it for a while in the archives of The New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/11/wildwood

I think this might be my favorite Diaz story so far.

Please share your favorite Diaz story with us.

"Teaching" by Roddy Doyle (April 2, 2007, in The New Yorker)

My Posts on Roddy Doyle

In the last few years I have read eight novels by Roddy Doyle and several of his short stories.  Obviously I greatly like and admire his work, much of which focuses on working class modern Irish of Dublin. 

"Teachers" takes place in just a few hours, set in a school in Dublin, on the opening day of the school year.  The narrator, has taught there for thirty years.  Now every year on opening day a few students will tell him he taught one of their parents.  He tries to bring the face of the parent to mind.  He used to totally love teaching, he tried to engage the students.  Sometimes the passion comes back but many days he is watching the clock for last bell.   He thinks back over his life, to the women he has been involved with.

"Teachers" is very well done story that lets us feel we understand the life of the teacher.

I think the section I most appreciated was when he began to talk about how the student body had changed in the last thirty years.  It felt very real.

You can read it for a while here

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/02/teaching

Please share your experience with Roddy Doyle with us.

Mel u

"The Monstro" by Junot Diaz (from The New Yorker, June 4, 2012)

My Posts on Junot Diaz

"Monstro" is a strange apocalyptic story by Junot Diaz set in the Domincan Republic and Haiti.  The June 4 and June 11, 2012 issues of The New Yorker featured works of science fiction by writers not normally known for this genre.   Diaz's story starts out with the narrator, a young Dominican man attending Brown University in Rhode Island hoping to become a journalist, talking about a mysterious disease that "actually makes Haitians darker" that has just begun to be noticed in relocation camps. 

Like most of the narrators in Diaz's fiction, the teller of this story is obsessed with hunting for women and is very much bonded to his mother.  The disease begins to spread rapidly.  Soon over 500,000 have it.  The disease takes a series of very strange twists.  Periodically the victims all simultaneously begin to make for about thirty seconds a terrible high pitched noise.  They cannot stand to be separated from each other.  The strange symptoms of the disease are very interesting.

The narrator is very good friends with another Brown University student from Santo Dominigo.  He comes from a hyper-wealthy family.  A lot of the story is just the two men hanging out together.  Our narrator is in awe of his friend's wealth.  

This is very much a fun story.

The story can be found here.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/04/monstro

Mel u

"The Bear Came Over The Mountain by Alice Munro ( December 27, 1999 inThe New Yorker)

My Posts on Alice Munro

When Alice Munro won The Nobel Price short story lovers world wide felt gratified to see the genre recognized.  Alice Munro has published 139 short stories and one novel, most set in her native rural Ontario.    I was kindly recently give an advance review copy of her forthcoming collection of twenty five short stories published from 1995 to 2014,  Family Furnishings.  It is a generous collection, well over five hundred pages.  

"The Bear Came Over the Mountain" was originally published in The New Yorker.  It is set in rural Ontario and centers on a retired college professor and his wife.  My main purpose in this post is to keep a record of my reading of this excellent story and to share with my readers a link to the story. 

Many have rightly said that Alice Munro can do more with thirty pages than most other authors can do with three hundred.   This is very true of "The Bear Comes Over The Mountain".  One day the professor finds his wife wandering around outside, she does not recognize him.  He has to choice but to place her in a facility.  Much of the story takes place on his visits.  She and a man their have formed a very close bond. ,He talks to the nurses their and they say these things happen but they pass.  The husband thinks back on the decades of their marriage.  We see the impact on changing habits on college life.  In time he meets the wife of the man his wife is bonded with.  She tells him not to be concerned on sex as her husband is not capable. The insights into both marriages are very moving.  The ending of the story was very satisfying. 

This is a very much worth your time story which you can read here

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/21/the-bear-came-over-the-mountain-2

Mel u

"Brownstone" by Reneta Adler

"Brownstone" by Reneta Adler (1978, 28 pages)

1978 O Henry Prize Winner 

Best American Short Story

Reneta Adler was born in Milan Italy in 1938.   Her parents fled Europe to escape the Nazis and she grew up in Danbury Connecticut.    She attended Ivy League schools and  the Sorbonne in Paris where she studies Linguistics and Structuralism.   She also graduated from Yale Law School.  She worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker for a  number of years.    She has written several highly regarded novels.   Her short story "Brownstone" won the 1978 O Henry Award for best short story by an American.

I read "Brownstone" in A Wonderful Town:   New York Stories from the New Yorker and enjoyed it a lot.   For those not from New York City, a brownstone is a row house constructed from  brownstone, often a multistory building building.   The story is told in the first person by a woman living in the building.   It is kind of a running commentary on her life and the lives of her neighbors and her observations on the neighbors.   It is very much a New York City slice of life in the big city story.   I enjoyed reading it a lot.    I would read another short story by Adler but probably will not seek out her longer fiction at this time.   Just too much else out there.

Please share your experience with Adler with us.   Reading suggestions are always greatly appreciated.

Mel u

"Midair" by Frank Conroy

"Midair" by Frank Conroy  (1986, 30 pages)


"Midair" by Frank Conroy (1936 to 2005 New York City, USA) was first published in the The New Yorker.   I read it in a very good collection of short stories  Wonderful Town:  New York Stories from the New Yorker (2007)   This is the first work by Conroy I have read.   

Conroy was a well regarded novelist, a respected Jazz musician (he won a Grammy for liner notes) and was the director of the renown Iowa Writer's Work Shop and the University of Iowa from 1887 to 2005.   


I will just post briefly on the story as I do not think it can be read online.   A great deal of time is covered in the thirty pages.  The story opens on a frightening note when the central character in the novel, Sean at age six, and his sister go to visit their insane father.   He end up dangling Sean outside the window of his high rise apartment until attendants from a mental hospital take the father away.   Sean seemingly forget this and leads an interesting a diverse life.   The story seems to end in a circle thirty years latter when he and a young man are trapped in a falling elevator.


I found this story interesting and the style of writing was kind of captivating though it did begin to wear on me a bit.  Based on this sample alone I would say I a glad I read this story but will not seek out longer works by Conroy.




Please share your experienced with Conroy with us.




Mel u

"The Way We Live Now" by Susan Sontag

"The Way We Live Now" by Susan Sontag (1986, 24 pages)

I recently purchased a great collection of short stories all set in New York City, Wonderful Town:  New York Stories from the New Yorker.    There are stories by lots of new to be writers, some authors I have read before, and some I am familiar with but have not yet read.   Among the short stories in the collection is Susan Sontag's (1933 to 2004-USA) very well know short story about the start of the aids epidemic in the Gay community in New York City.   Sontag was born in New York City and is thought of as a New York City intellectual ready to challenge the establishment whenever it seemed like the thing to do to her.   She has written a few works of fiction, a well known book on photography, lots of diverse essays but I think she is best known and will mostly be remembered for her landmark essay "Notes on Camp" (1964).  I spoke a bit about "Notes on Camp" in my post on Alfred Jarry in which I pondered whether or not Ubo Roi should be classified as camp.   In addition too "Notes on Camp" which even though it is almost 50 years old now (yikes) still needs to be read by anyone trying to understand the artistic and literary sensibilities of the 20th and 21th century.  


"The Way We Live Now" opens with a successful New York City man finding out he has the "new disease", the word aids is never used in the story.   We do not learn what he does but we do know he goes to conferences in places like Helsinki.   There is a very elitist quality to this story.  One of the characters even says it is a shame this disease will strike down so many men would have the potential to make valuable contributions to the arts and sciences.    The lead character has lots of friends in the gay community.   Nobody really quite understands the disease yet but people keeping saying a cure has to be right around the corner.   There is debate over whether or not women can get it.    One of the characters says his biggest regret is he will no longer be able to have completely uninhibited sex.  One of the emotionally hardest aspects of the disease is that it can lay dormant for years so when it does become serious many people have no idea from whom they might have contracted it.   Sontag does a great job of letting us see the huge wave of fear that was over taking the New York City gay community.  The disease both built feelings of community through a joint fear and destroyed it as you might never know who might be a carrier.   


(Note on page lengths-my page lengths are estimates-I am reading a kindle edition so the page count may be higher than than in a print book-I do wish all kindle editions had page numbers in edition to percent completed.)


"The Way We Live Now" is a very well done story that lets us see first hand an important part of New York City history.   


Please share your experience with Susan Sontag?


Is "Notes on Camp" still important?


Was Sontag a bit of a poser and attention seeker given to theatrical remarks like "Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history".




Mel u
'

"The Baster" by Jeffrey Eugenides

"The Baster" by Jeffrey Eugenides (1996, 17 pages)

Jeffrey Eugenides (1960, USA) won The Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his novel Middlesex.   His latest book, The Marriage Plot is getting a lot of mostly favorable attention from book bloggers.   He has also published a number of short stories, mostly in The New Yorker.   I read and enjoyed Middlesex   shortly after it came out in paperback.   It is an interesting story of the lives of three generations of Greek-Americans.   The main character is an hermaphrodite.  

"The Baster" is another short story from the collection of short stories first published in The New Yorker all of which are set in New York City, Wonderful Town:   New York Stories from The New Yorker.   The 2010 movie The Switch  is based on the plot of  "The Baster".  

"The Baster" is a funny, insightful development of the lament of unattached women in New York City (and else where!) that "the good ones are all taken".   As the story opens we meet a successful attractive forty year old New York City Woman, an assistant producer for a nationwide TV network news show, whose biological clock is pushing her hard to have a baby.   She says when she was younger she hoped to meet a man to share her life with but now she has concluded that if she wants to have someone to share her life she had better give birth to them.    She decides the best thing to do is to have a child via artificial insemination and picks the seeming genetically high quality husband of a friend as the donor.    She even gives an "artificial insemination" party with lots of her friends there including a man she once date and who may still love her (he narrates the story) but he is a reject as the father as he is way to short.   The party did feel a but "creepy" to me and I guess that was how it was meant to feel.

This is a good well written story that I am glad I have now read.  

Please share your experiences with Eugenides with us.


Mel u

"The Failure" by Jonathan Franzen

"The Failure" by Jonathan Franzen  (1999, 18 pages)

Jonathan Franzen (1959, USA) is the author of two best selling novels.  The Corrections (2001) received the National Book Award (major American award) and was also selected by the Oprah Book Club, as was his  2010 book Freedom.   He frequently appears on American television, has been on the Oprah Winfrey Show and was on the cover of Time Magazine.    Say whatever you like about Oprah, I cannot think of anyone else in the world who has done more in the last ten years to stimulate reading than her.   When The Corrections was selected by Oprah for her book club, Franzen at first was concerned this would cause his book to be seen as "for women only".    This caused a controversy which helped propel his book to best selling status when he apparently declined to go on her show.  In 2010 when his second book was selected he went on her show and it was mutual gushes all round.   He seems to be a frequent guest on American talk shows and has even appeared in cartoon form on "The Simpsons".    


I recently purchased an excellent anthology of short stories, all of which are set in New York City and all of which originally appeared in The New Yorker, Wonderful Town:  New York Stories from the New Yorker.    There are stories by lots of new to me writers in the collection, some authors I have read before, and some I am familiar with but have not yet read.   I was glad a story by Jonathan Franzen was in the collection.   


The central character in "The Failure" is a thirty-nine year man who was recently fired from his position as a professor at a New York City College.   He  specialized in Renaissance Studies and was fired for several reasons, but mostly for improper sexual contact with a female student.   Everybody in his small family seems very successful but him.  His parents live in an expensive apartment and his sister is partners in a very popular and trendy restaurant.   He has a girl friend but she seems in the process of dumping him.


His relationship with his parents is interestingly depicted.    He seems to define himself in opposition to the values of his parents.   In one funny scene we learn of the time the man intentionally brought over his very vocal Marxist girl friend just so she could make his rock hard conservative father go crazy.


He sent a two page synopsis of a play he wrote to a well known theatrical agent.   She loved the synopsis but once she saw the actual play seemed to show a total obsession with breasts she will not return his phone calls.   


The story is really slice of the life of the characters in the story, with the focus on the male lead character.     


"The Failure" is written in a light handed easy to read fashion and I am glad I read it.   Based on this small sample, I would say if I had a free copy of one of Franzen's books I would maybe start it but I would not buy one of his works.       


Please share your experience with Franzen with us.






Mel u

"Poor Visitor" by Jamaica Kincaid

"Poor Visitor" by Jamaica Kincaid (1989, ten pages)


Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 in Antigua but it can safely be said The New Yorker brought her to life and world attention as a writer.  In 1965 she moved to Westchester, N. Y. to be an au pair or as we say in the Philippines, a yaya.    She then after leaving this position studied photography at The New School for Social Research and began to write short stories based loosely on her own experiences.   Through contacts she made from her writing she ultimately went to work for The New Yorker while frequently publishing short stories in the magazine.    She ended up marrying the son of the editor of The New Yorker.    She has also written some well regarded novels and works of non-fiction.   


I recently purchased a collection of short stories all set in New York City that were first published in the magazine, Wonderful Town:  New York Stories from the New Yorker.    There are stories by lots of new to be writers, some authors I have read before, and some I am familiar with but have not yet read.   I was glad a story by Jamaica Kincaid was in the collection.   


It appears little of the work of Kincaid can be read online.   All of her New Yorker stories are available only to paid subscribers.  Given that I will just post briefly on this story.


This story seems very much based on Kincaid's own experiences.   The story is a  good account of what it must have been like to move from a tropical island that New Yorkers dream of going to in the winter, to New York City to be a yaya.   The story is told in the first person.   We can feel the loneliness and isolation the yaya feels.   She does not have a lot of work to do as her charges go to school during the day so she can do her college homework during the day.   The family is quite affluent and  also has a maid, who lets the yaya know her place right away.   


The fun in this very well written story is in seeing the yaya struggle to adjust to her new environment.     She is torn away from everything she knows.


I think a lot readers in the Philippines, many of whom probably had a yaya as a child or employ one now, might find this story interesting.   I know I did.


Please share your experiences with Jamaica Kincaid with us.


Mel u