Steven Vincent Benét was probably best known as a poet during his lifetime, receiving a Nobel prize for John Brown's Body, his lengthy narrative poem about the Civil War, and a posthumous Nobel for Western Star, an unfinished narrative poem about the settling of the United States. Benét is also well known for his short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster" for which he won an O. Henry Award. (Benét also wrote a short story based on The Rape of the Sabine Women called "The Sobbin' Women", which provided the inspiration for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.) Americanness or the idea of what it means to be American dominants the bulk of Benét's work, certainly the work for which he has gained the most notoreity, whether he writes about a specific period in American history (John Brown's Body) or explores the rights and benefits of being an American ("The Devil and Daniel Webster").

In "An End to Dreams", which also earned him an O. Henry Award, Benét examines the American Dream of rising from childhood poverty to financial success later in life. The story begins with James Rimington waking from the ether-induced sleep of surgery and seeing his reflection in a mirror that he thinks a nurse is holding in front of his face. Confronted with this image of himself, that somehow seems foreign, James begins to consider the path he took to get where he is in life, feeling ashamed of being poor as a child, which led to his leaving his small hometown and sweetheart Elsa to pursue a cutthroat career on Wall Street. Just as he thinks his soul has departed from his body to hear his doctors pronounce him dead, he awakes from a dream to find his wife Elsa sitting by his side, assuring him that they have been married 30 years in the town where they had grown up.

For a writer who has displayed as much patriotism in his work as Benét, I'm surprised how measured a portrayal of the American Dream this story presents. Benét certainly suggests a trade-off between financial success and personal relationships. In his dream, James must leave Elsa to pursue a prosperous career, and in reality to be married to Elsa he has had to trade a career that would have made him wealthy for one that has made him only financially stable. In James' dream one of the doctor's attending him makes the comment, "...how do we know what he has to live for?...He may have nozzing [sic]." And when James dreams of his soul being able to hear other people's thoughts, he quickly becomes frustrated that no one is thinking of him as he dies. He evens dreams of visiting Elsa, who is thinking of her son's upcoming marriage. When James awakes and realizes that he did not decide to forsake Elsa for riches, Benét says that "he knew the measure of his victory and defeat, and was at peace." Though "at peace," James also feels a measure of "defeat" having chosen the life that he did. The fact that he dreams of having left Elsa to pursue a career on Wall Street suggests that somewhere in his unconscious he felt a certain amount of regret for marrying Elsa.

As Nina Baym notes in her essay "Melodramas of Beset Manhood", the women of this story act as a socializing force that prevent James from "exploring the wilderness," i.e. leaving the small town for Wall Street, to discover his own destiny. In his dream, James looks scornfully at his mother whom he blames for making him poor, or at least making him confront the realities of their financial situation, like the patch on the elbow of his coat for which his schoolmates tease him. As he begins a career later in life, he considers his mother a financial burden, though seemingly only if he remains in his hometown. As he contemplates the possibility of taking the job at the bank that Mr. Beach offers him, James thinks, "If he and Elsa married he would never get out of Bladesburg. He couldn't stop helping Mom. Elsa was too decent for that." Not only would Elsa prevent James from escaping his small hometown as he desires to pursue a larger career, her decency would also compel him to support his mother, a further restriction on his possibilities.

"The Bottle Imp", first published in 1891, is one of the three stories included in Robert Louis Stevenson's collection Island Nights' Entertainments, also known as South Sea Tales. All of the stories take place in various locales in the South Seas, influenced by Stevenson's travels of the area that were intended to improve his health. "The Bottle Imp" is set mostly in Hawaii and Stevenson incorporates some local dialect into the story: Kokua's name means "help" and he refers to white people as Haoles several times.

Stevenson's treatment of his island characters surprised me. I didn't consider his characterization of these Hawaiian natives any different from how he might characterize British ones. Stevenson neither simplifies nor overly exoticizes his characters, though one might consider whether Stevenson chose to set this story in "exotic" lands due to its mystical nature. However, the Haoles in the story believe the stories about the bottle just as readily as any of the people of the South Seas. Kokua and Keawe also have an understanding of outside cultures and colonization of nearby islands.

The story revolves around the hangman paradox, playing out specifically in this case as what is the lowest price the bottle can be sold for? Obviously, the bottle won't be bought at the price of one cent because the person who buys it cannot sell it at a loss, and one would assume the same for the price of two cents. That argument can be followed to suggest that the bottle cannot be sold at any finite price; however, a logical person could also conclude that if someone purchased the bottle for $50 then the person could surely find someone willing to purchase the bottle for an amount less than $50.

The Wikipedia entry about Stevenson mentions that he fell out of favor with the twentieth-century literary elite, such as Leonard and Virginia Woolf, who relegated him to second-class literary status as a writer of children's literature and horror stories. I can see why the Woolfs and other modernists might not think much of Stevenson. The modernists' concern lies in making the internal experiential through experimental literary techniques such as stream-of-consciousness writing and interior monologue. Oftentimes, their characters' psychic reality is more important than their actual surroundings. Stevenson writes plainly, but he effectively explores human psychology through the twists and turns of the plot rather than a deep exploration of characters' psyches. Keawe and Kokua are thinly drawn, and they act more as placeholders on which the reader may project themselves. I must say that the story ended differently than I expected. I thought Stevenson would come to some "Gift of the Magi" conclusion, so I, like Keawe, was surprised that someone would be willing to keep the bottle despite the threat of an unpleasant afterlife.

How is this a short story?

I do not ask this question out of criticism but rather curiosity. The story consists of only one sentence — a sentence rivaled only by the first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities — which is a series of instructions given to a girl by her mother. The reader knows only of the girl from the two interjections, set off in italics, that the girl makes.

So where is the narrative? With this story, Kincaid seems to trump even the simplest of plots of novels such as Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway, which basically involve the main characters walking around a city for a day. But somehow with one fabulous run-on sentence Kincaid does manage to create a narrative of sorts, one somewhat dependent upon the reader’s interpretation.

The mother’s speech begins with descriptions of what chores to do on Mondays and Tuesdays before the lecture becomes a tangential slew of instruction and scolding. The mention of Monday then Tuesday teases the reader with the suggestion of a sequence to the story, which Kincaid then quickly discards. A more traditional concept of narrative — as in, this event happened followed by this event and the characters reacted — does not exist within this story. The story consists entirely of dialogue with no descriptive sentences to service furthering the plot — there isn’t one — or describing the characters. Because Kincaid chooses to neither name nor describe the girl and mother, I am inclined to believe that the story intends to provide a picture of a particular culture or subculture, most likely Antiguan culture, rather than two specific people. The lack of descriptive sentences also suspends the story outside of a specific time period. These bits of “advice” could have been delivered at one time, over the span of several hours or even years. Thus, the lack of sentences outside of the dialogue gives the story more universality. The lack of usual punctuation also distinguishes this story from the average piece of fiction, and, again, suggests timelessness and an otherness of the culture in which this conversation occurs.

Though this story provides only a brief insight into the culture of Antigua, the insight manages to be rather complete in its illustration of women’s place within society. The mother’s instructions, in fact, provide an outline of female gender roles. The list describes the more public actions of being a woman — such as what to clean on Monday, what to wash on Tuesday, and how to act properly and not like a “slut” — and the more subversive knowledge, such as how to abort an unwanted fetus. The relationship between the mother and daughter is also revealed as somewhat complicated. While the mother does not seem to display much affection to her child, she does aim to arm her daughter with the knowledge that the girl needs to survive.

Ralph Ellison’s “King of the Bingo Game” is, as is most of his work, an interesting study of Black identity. I found this story particularly interesting because of my current contact with immigrants. The director of the center where I work constantly reminds me and the other VISTA that our clients lives are based entirely on chance.

In “King of the Bingo Game” the main character’s life also seems to depend solely on luck — he plays bingo every night hoping to win a little money to pay for his sick wife’s medical bills. When he does have a bingo and is able to spin the wheel to win the cash prize, he finally feels in control of his fate, his wife’s fate, and his reality. He controls the wheel that, until that moment, has been uncontrollable, a fickle creature that decides whether his wife’s health will or will not improve. He keeps the wheel spinning as a way to suspend her fate — he cannot know the outcome of the spin, whether he will or, more importantly, will not win the money to pay for her treatment. By controlling the wheel, he removes the element of chance from his life and finally takes control.

I guess that’s all that I have to say about this story since I do not have a copy of it with me at the moment. I enjoyed it. Ellison very adeptly builds tension in this story and I liked the surrealism.

Oh my god. A story by Ernest Hemingway that I actually like and admire as skillfully crafted? Who’d ever’ve thought?

Frederick Busch, the man who wrote a little critique of this story that the anthology included after the piece, lauds Hemingway’s dialogue in this story. Eh. The content is excellent, I will agree, but I always take issue with his dialogue for being not quite believable. For example, “‘And we could have all this,’ she said. ‘And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.’” People don’t talk like that — people on Aaron Spelling shows talk like that. My arguments with my S.O. usually go something like this: “Why are you being such an ass?” “Why are you being such a bi–” Glare. “I didn’t say it.” “But you almost did.” “I’m sorry. It’s difficult to unlearn the first 23 years of my life.” “It isn’t easy for me either.” “I didn’t say that it was!” “And I wasn’t saying that you were saying that!” And so on. And I will always critique Hemingway’s use of “it.” I know, blah blah blah, prominent authors can write as they like and break the rules set for the common person, but antecedent-less pronouns are annoying and sometimes confusing.

From the first few sentences of the story, Hemingway sets the emotional landscape of the story.

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun.

That description of the landscape introduces the important image of “sides” that Hemingway uses throughout the story to emphasize “the man” and “the girl” being at odds about something. (Though never stated explicitly, the reader eventually realizes that the couple is arguing about the woman having an abortion.) The image of the station having “no shade and no trees” and being “between two lines of rails in the sun” presents the venue of the lovers’ confrontation as very vulnerable, unprotected, because of its exposure to the sun, and yet almost like a prison, considering the station being trapping between the two rails. Both ideas suggest an alienation of sorts, relating the setting to the couple, who are alienated from each other, and to the woman, who is also alienated culturally by not speaking the native language.

Busch writes in his critique that the woman’s “lover or husband wants the fetus aborted, and she wants to keep him.” Re-reading that sentence I am unclear whether Busch is referring to the lover or the fetus with that “him.” Though I do agree with Busch that the man seems to have an unequal amount of power over the woman. Even in the appositives that Hemingway uses to refer to the characters: the male is “the man” but the female is “the girl.” The man also has a power through language — he speaks Spanish — that the woman does not. And his judgement seems to control the woman’s imagination. The woman makes the observation that the hills “look like white elephants” early in the story. When the man seemingly dismisses her observation as frivolous, she tempers her opinion to, “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.”

Throughout the story, the woman continues to contemplate the hills, the trees, the river, and other aspects of the landscape across from the station. The image of the hills resembles the shape of a pregnant woman’s body, and the earth is usually a symbol of fertility and reproduction. Her comment comparing the hills to white elephants – rare and somewhat mystical animals – suggests that the woman’s feelings toward her pregnancy are positive. Hemingway does not give many indicators of the woman’s — or the man’s, for that matter — tone of voice. But I don’t read their conversation as the woman wanting to please the man in order to keep him, rather debating her options should she do something that would not please him, such as keeping the baby. As I said before, the woman seems very alienated in this environment. She is dependent upon the man for both communication and sustenance (of a sort) during this interlude at the station. She may not feel as though she can do as she wants with her body, and have the baby, if it risks separating her from the man, who seems crucial to her survival.

The girl did not say anything.

“I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.”

“Then what will we do afterward?”

“We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.”

“What makes you think so?”

“That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.”

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.

“And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”

“I know we will.”

…

“And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”

“I love you now. You know I love you.”

“I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again and if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”

When the man mentions the abortion, the woman does not seem to react to the idea favorably. Her attitude changes suddenly after she “look[s] at the bead curtain, put[s] her hand out and [takes] hold of two of the strings of beads.” That bead curtain is featured earlier in the story when she asks the man what the writing on the curtain — “Anis del Toro” — means. The curtain seems to be a reminder of her dependence upon him and, thus, causes her reconsideration.

Hemingway does not present the man in a very favorable light. He acts selfishly, pleading with the woman to have an abortion because he doesn’t “want anyone but [her].” He also seems dense. He makes an observation about the travelers in the train station “waiting reasonably for their trains.” This thought suggests that he thinks the woman is not acting “reasonably.” He continues to urge her to have an abortion, telling her that the operation is “simple,” seemingly unaware and unconcerned about the emotional complexity of an abortion for a woman.

I cannot decide the significance of the ending. The last of the conversation that precedes the man going into the station suggests an increased distance between the two, especially on the part of the woman as she “looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley.” So I cannot decide if her final comment of “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine,” is in defiance or compliance with the man’s wishes. By saying that “There’s nothing wrong with [her]” she might be defending her desire to keep the pregnancy; or, she might be agreeing to continue on her journey with the man. Does the reader really know for certain what her ultimate decision is? The story takes place while the couple is waiting for a train, which suggests that this woman has the forty minutes until the train comes to decide if she will stay with the hills and the river and all of those symbols of life and fertility and keep the pregnancy or board the train and have the abortion to keep the man.

A man in his later years, riding his bicycle, gets slammed by a car. He is rushed to the hospital, where doctors decide he must have his right leg amputated. We learn how he enters upon the long process of dealing with this loss as, after a while, he prepares to return to his apartment.

Thus begins one of the more poorly written articles that I’ve read in a serious news source. It reads more like a freshman’s first college essay than an entertainment feature in a newspaper. Geez.

So is this a castration metaphor? Because I’m having a hard time thinking that it isn’t.

The main character finds himself in a particularly vulnerable position from the beginning of his ordeal. The doctor tells him while he’s under the haze of shock and anaesthesia that he must have his leg amputated. When Paul becomes fully conscious again, he feels as though the doctor stole something from him, even if the purpose of the procedure was to help him.

Paul’s relationships with his nurses seem to relate directly to his penis. ….Er, that sounds odd. Anyway, Paul mentions that his first nurse is “competant” but Coetzee’s tone indicates that her competancy is a negative rather than positive thing. She humiliates Paul by using baby talk, calling his penis a “willy” and jokingly telling him to ask permission for her to clean “his willy” when she bathes him. Marijana, however, is respectful of Paul’s privacy when she bathes him, adverting her eyes from his so that “he doesn’t see her seeing him.”

His amputation seems to emasculate Paul and yet he refuses to try prothesis so that he might be able to walk again. And without his leg, he is first belittled by Sheena, his first nurse, and then by an old lover who he feels would no longer be willing to sleep with him because of his stump. Paul seems to like Marijana because of her submissive tendencies around him — her presence does not threaten his masculinity as the competancy of Sheena and his lover.

When he meets Marijana’s children, he reflects that he will not be able to have children now. Paul is not very old so I suspect his amputation causes him to feel as such. Feeling unable to produce a family of his own, Paul adopts Marijana and her family. Lonely in his new confinement, he forms a bond with Marijana’s family. Marijana becomes his wife in a way and her children his grandchildren. He appreciate Marijana’s nursing, her care of him and he seems to want to reciprocate that care to her family. He loves Marijana, but it is not a love of passion or lust. He merely seems to like loving her because it makes him feel good.

I was not overwhelmed by this story but I do not feel as though reading it wasted my time. I think that Jackson had an interesting premise, but the ending did not offer enough of a punch. In the beginning of the story, Jackson tried to make the lottery seem so benign that within a few paragraphs I guessed that someone was going to die at the end. Granted, I did not suspect that the townspeople would use the pile of rocks that the children gathered gleefully at the beginning of the story.

When does this story take place? The town is called a “village” and the relationships between men and women do not seem to be particularly modern. But Mr. Summers is wearing “blue jeans.” Shirley Jackson lived from 1919-1965, but elements of the story seem to pre-date this time period. So is Jackson suggesting that this story is taking place in the future perhaps? When society has regressed?

I wish that the reader had more context about the origin of the lottery. Is the lottery meant to prevent murders by allowing everyone to purge violent tendencies? Is a socially acceptable murder meant to discourage others? Or is the lottery a way to curb population growth? Or is the society in the same state as the world of Delicatessen and the only available meat comes from people? I wish the reader had more information. Even a brief description of what the village folk do with the corpse would have been helpful.

Jackson very obviously is exploring the darker aspects of tradition in this story. Traditions can be nice—I enjoy my Christmas Eve cup of milk tea with my mother even though I don’t celebrate anymore—but traditions also act as a shield against progress. I cannot think of the name of the golf course off hand, but I remember a couple of years ago the club’s major argument against letting women join their prestigious organization was that the club had been traditionally composed of men. Considering her era, I can understand why this subject might be of interest to Jackson. This story also suggests that all humans have innate tendencies toward extreme violence. Jackson insinuates that people need someone to victimize and that violence becomes easier when many people attack one.

From Lin Tan’s simplified speech to the more formulaic “man meets woman, man and woman fall in love, man and woman live happily ever after” plot, “Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle” exists in that romantic realm of fairy tales.

Both of the main characters live in a romantic surreality. Lin Tan is a geneticist who works with fetuses, a time of a person’s life that everyone experiences yet no one remembers. Humans can observe the fetus’ experience in the womb but cannot recreate the experience or remember their experience. Therefore, the fetus’ time in the womb is magical, and Lin Tan describes his work with fetuses as magical or in rather magical terms. His practice of Zen meditation also elevates him beyond reality in a way.

At the place where her car had been, several pigeons flew down from a roof and began to peck at the sidewalk. Lin took that for a sign and went back into the hotel and sat in meditation for an hour, remembering the shape of the universe and the breathtaking order of the species. He imagined the spirit of Margaret and the forms of her ancestors back a hundred generations. Then he imagined Margaret in the womb and spoke to her in a dream on the day she was conceived.

From his position to which meditation lifts him, he feels as though he can communicate with Margaret in a meaningful way. Lin Tan is also captivated by poetry. He envies and respects Margaret for her father being a poet. Margaret also seems consumed by her father’s poetic world. She continually compares Lin Tan to her father and seems enchanted by him because of the connection.

Formation and development seems to be important in this story. Part of the attraction between Margaret and Lin Tan seems to stem from their interest in how things become. Lin Tan, as mentioned, studies fetuses and Margaret studies the development of language. She teaches first-graders because she is interested by their discovering how to form language on paper as words and then stringing the words into sentences. The fact that these similarities attract them to one another interests me because they meet over destruction. Margaret wanders to the bridge where she encounters Lin Tan because an acquaintance had committed suicide there recently.

I have not read any more of Gilchrist’s work, but from what I have read about her in critical texts, she likes romantically pairing characters from opposite backgrounds. Roy Hoffman notes in his review of Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle,

In previous works the white Southern woman, Protestant or Roman Catholic, who becomes involved with men of markedly different backgrounds usually writes her own prescription for failure.

However, in this story Margaret and Lin Tan’s relationship does not fail. As the title implies, “light can be both wave and particle”—people from two very different cultures still have something in common. Some unnamed element of human nature connects them. The ending of this story, with Margaret’s father challenging Lin Tan to a game of chess, suggests a number of possibilities for the future of these young lovers, as many as there are moves in a chess game.

I was pleased to find a piece of Amy Hempel’s work in a short story collection because I have seen her work lauded by many sources. Based upon my impressions of this story, her praise is well-deserved. And I want to learn how to knit. Well, I wanted to learn how to knit, but after reading this story knitting seems a little pathetic.

This story deals with abortion in an unexpected, in my opinion, way. While I liked Alice Walker’s “The Abortion”, I didn’t find the content too surprising. But Hempel’s using knitting as a surrogate for reproduction was truly unique.

Learning to knit was the obvious thing. The separation of tangled threads, the working-together of raveled ends into something tangible and whole—this mending was as confounding as the groom who drives into a stop sign on the way to his wedding. Because symptoms mean just what they are. What about the woman whose empty hand won’t close because she cannot grasp that her child is gone?

I’m still trying to puzzle out this paragraph. It quite clearly introduces the idea that the main character has become consumed by knitting as a “symptom” of some emotional experience—an abortion as the reader learns later. The phrase that most puzzles me is “this mending was as confounding as the groom who drives into a stop sign on the way to his wedding.” “Confounding.” Why does she use “confounding” there? Perhaps Hempel is trying to emphasize the apparently contradictory actions: a man on his way to a supposedly joyous occasion causes tragedy by driving into a pole; a woman who has just destroyed a “child” spends all of her time creating things. But where is the paradox in a mother unable to close her hand?

I also found this passage intriguing:

I remembered when another doctor made the news. A young retarded boy had found his father’s gun, and while the family slept, he shot them all in bed. The police asked the boy what he had done. But the boy went mute. He told them nothing. Then they called in the doctor.

“We know you didn’t do it,” the doctor said to the boy, “but tell me, did the gun do it?”

And yes, the boy was eager to tell him just what the gun had done.

I wanted the same out, and Dr. Diamond wouldn’t let me have it.

What does she want the out from? Conceiving the child or aborting the child? Or maybe both? Perhaps this suggestion sounds a little silly, but I would imagine that an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy might make a woman feel as though her body had betrayed her. The gun (her reproductive system) had done it and not her. Her boyfriend(?) has a similar reaction to her being pregnant, saying that “he had never made a girl pregnant before. He said that he had never even made a girl late.”

Translation of the title: “Begin, Slip Together, Increase, Continue, Repeat.” I’m trying to figure out the significance of the title. Obviously, it is significant to the main character’s obsession with knitting. But does the title suggest something besides knitting? Like sex, maybe? Eh, probably not. I considered the possibility given that the story pertains to reproduction, but Hempel only discusses pregnancy really and not the sex that causes it. And “begin, slip together, increase, continue, repeat” doesn’t have the same resonance with reproduction as it does with sex.

Besides serving as some kind of penance, knitting also seems to provide the main character with an elite group to join. When the main character finally sees Dale Anne’s baby, she instantly wishes that she had what she does not. However, while she cannot understand Dale Anne’s position, she can understand the language of knitting:

I scan the instructions abbreviated like musical notation: K 10, sl 1, K2 tog, psso, sl 1, K2 to end. I feel I could sing these instructions. It is compression of language into code; your ability to decipher it makes you privy to the secrets shared by Ingrid and the women at the round oak table.

She also mentions at the end of the story the few women of Fair Isles who know how to knit, who knit with undyed wool because there is no lichen to color the wool. Denied the possibility to reproduce, this woman has submerged herself in an activity associated mostly with women, an activity that few women still pursue.

Yeesh, what a disturbing story. I read the first bit last night before falling asleep, so after I read the second part today I re-read the beginning and shivered. If someone had given me this story without an author name attached, I could have made an educated guess that Joyce Carol Oates was the author because of the characterization of the main character and the descriptions of violence.

In her essay “Women and Madness in the Fiction of Joyce Carol Oates,” Charlotte Goodman notes, “Oates’s female characters often experience acute psychological malaise because of their powerlessness, and many ultimately become suicidal or psychotic.” Or, in this case, homicidal. Goodman’s essay concentrates mainly on Oates’ female characters in her novels, which, understandably, receive more character development and background story than the main character of this very brief short story. Thus, one cannot conclude whether the main character’s mother influenced her actions, as Goodman notes, but some of Goodman’s other observations are pertinent: the main character does expect the attentions of a man to validate her existence and, ultimately, her “search…to better [her] status or find happiness and fulfillment through relationships with men, marriage, and motherhood…ends in failure.”

In a story about a mother killing her children in order to keep the affections of a man, probably one of the creepiest sentences to use as the final sentence must be, “Sherri was the one Mommy always loved best.”

Oates uses an interesting style of writing for the second part of the story. Her sentences seem hurried or child-like and lacking proper punctuation. For example:

The entire day, the sun was hidden behind clouds, one of those gauzy gray days you feel like screaming but she was calm, she was in control. Six-year-old Tommy ran inside when the school bus let him off all excited saying the bus driver had almost hit a buck in the fog and she smiled and kissed him and walked past as if she hadn’t heard. She’s been smiling all day. It wasn’t practice, it was her natural self: as, in high school, she’d smiled all the time. She was waiting for a phone call, she’d left a message on the answering service of one of the girls she used to work with, when she was working, and when the call came she had something planned to say she’d memorized, a strange man prowling the woods behind the trailer, a man with a beard, or maybe without a beard, probably a hunter, she hadn’t wanted to stare out at him wasn’t worried really but she’d mention it, then talk of something else. Not too much detail—that gave you away. From TV you learned that.

The sentence structure seems to be somewhere between stream-of-consciousness and….uh, not stream-of-consciousness. (How would you describe it?) Oates’ writing style seems indicative of the main character’s machination and excitement and, perhaps, her psychosis as well. The style also offers the reader access to the character’s mindset, but doesn’t quite submerge the reader in her thoughts as a complete stream-of-consciousness style would have.

I’ve always found A.M. Homes’ subject matter intriguing because she usually chooses to write about male sexuality, and deviant male sexuality at that. Not having a penis, I would never attempt to describe the experience of having one, especially in the explicit terms of this story, which is all about a man’s relationship to his penis.

The first few paragraphs offer some interesting images. The image of the narrator “shuffling one foot in front of the other as though in shackles” made of his jeans and underwear suggests that his genitalia have somehow become a burden. But the second paragraph offers rather contrasting images: his penis, like a pet, rubbing up against his ankle, kept in a drawer like a fond memento.

In his memories of his childhood, he remembers his penis as the thing that separated him from his mother and sisters. Because it made him unique, people treated him differently, which empowered him in a way. He understood his penis as something to be admired. I understand his sexual liaisons with men as also intended to represent nonsexual social interactions between males, which Homes suggests is based upon admiration of their common parts. So is Homes suggesting that women are willing participants in empowering men through their genitals? ….That didn’t sound right. Or, considering that the narrator is male, is Homes implying that males think that women respect or admire or idolize their penises, but really only they appreciate their genitalia?

As is the case with all of the stories in The Safety of Objects, the main character of this story is dealing with identity and the slipperiness of it. Homes implies, though does not specifically state, that the narrator has AIDS and that the disease, while it emaciates most of the body, does not affect the penis.

I see sick men, friends that have shriveled into strangers, unwelcome in hospitals and at home. They can’t think or breathe, and still as they go rattling towards death, it never loses an ounce, it lies fattened, untouched in the darkness between their legs. It is strikingly an ornament, a reminder of the past.

Should I ask for a divorce? A separation from myself on the grounds that this part of me that is more male than I alone could ever be has betrayed me. We no longer have anything in common except profound depression and disbelief.

The disease, as diseases often do, has created a fissure between the narrator and his body, or in this case a part of his body. It has attacked his masculinity, in a way, by not attacking what he considers the source of his maleness. I suppose the, er, fortitude of his penis compared to the ailing of his body makes him feel as though he never fulfilled the potential of his sex. The ending suggests that such essentialist ideals of gender lead to self-destruction. As the title implies, the narrator is trying to separate his “I” from the collective idea of “It”—how is he a part of this thing called masculinity.

This collection is composed mostly of short stories from Jessica Abel’s independent comic series, Artbabe. A few of her journalism pieces are included as well. While I like several of the individual stories very much, these pieces do not form a good collection. As with prose short story collections, graphic short story collections should consist of stories with similar themes or images repeated throughout the selections. True, all of the stories in Mirror, Window deal with relationships in some manner, but the journalism pieces really don’t. Some of the stories seem to have been included simply because they are referenced in another story, regardless of quality or a comparative theme. The reader must read “As I Live and Breathe”—a rather uninspiring account of two people harboring crushes on each other trying to begin a relationship—because it introduces the characters of an untitled segment—a fantastic and subtle piece. The untitled segment could have been enjoyed without the set up. Does the reader really benefit from knowing these characters’ back story? Not really. The segment is so short and is so much in the moment that the backstory almost becomes burdensome. “He Said” is seemingly included because “Châiné” references the incident it features. But “He Said” is odd and unclear—is the main character a secret agent or just delusional?—and the description of the events in “Châiné” is sufficient.

Of the stories in this collection, “Châiné” and the untitled segment most impressed me.

“Châiné” – This story is probably my favorite and I found Abel’s artwork the most effective. The first panel of the story manages to set the tone with just an empty hallway. A broom and dustpan sit untouched—evidence of someone trying to clean up a mess. But the next panel reveals a drawer partially open, shirts hanging out—evidence of the true disarray of the main character’s life. Abel then reveals Paloma in pieces, starting with her foot, then the leg…. Abel keeps the frames very tight, trapping Paloma as she feels trapped in her career and her apartment. Anyway, I could go frame by frame, but if you’re interested just read the damn thing. The first really open frame of Paloma is when she drives into the pool at the hotel. The world from which Paloma is escaping—her apartment, her boyfriend, her job—seems to have a general evasive male presence. She retreats to be with her (female) friend, where she feels safe and, as the ending suggests, wants to stay.

Untitled Segment – This segment was the only piece that really challenged me as a reader. Abel has a knack for presenting recognizable characters, but she seems somewhat trapped in this comfort area of identifying with her readers rather than confronting them with something new. Anyway, I really like the contrast in this piece between the woman running gleefully and the man, refusing to run, spouting falsely chivalric palaver.

I chose to read this very brief essay of Montaigne’s before I went to bed last night because the title amused me. I was expecting a rant against the bratty behaviour of young children, not a thoughtful observation of conjoined twins that precipitates Montaigne suggesting universal acceptance of things we consider strange.

My favorite bit:

What we call monsters are not so to God, who sees in the immensity of his work the infinity of forms that has comprised in it; and it is for us to believe that this figure that astonishes us is as related and linked to some other figure of the same kind unknown to man. From his infinite wisdom there proceeds nothing but that is good and ordinary and regular; but we do not see its arrangement and relationship….We call contrary to nature what happens contrary to custom; nothing is anything but according to nature.

Most likely Montaigne’s comments are limited to those visibly strange, not socially or sexually strange. But maybe I’m wrong. He did write an essai about sexuality in Virgil, which was taboo for his time.

This essay fits with Montaigne’s thoughts about the purpose of personal introspection through essay (according to the introduction provided in my mighty book of essays): that the activity is not vain nor narcissistic, rather by writing about ourselves we can discern the common aspects of all human experience. The notion that the experience of this young boy whose brother is partially attached to him has universality might be a difficult idea for some people to grasp.

I feel gypped.

The first (I would have a specific number of pages here for you, but the cat is currently sleeping on top of my book and he is too cute to move) pages of this story develop it into a gothic tale of female fury and victimization. The last couple of pages, however, fail to fulfill the reader’s expectation of another story of victimization (that of Sybil’s mother) and Sybil laments her “own folly” in perpetrating her downfall. And she goes and marries Guy, who I still don’t particularly care for despite Alcott’s efforts to redeem him.

I would have preferred that the story ended with Sybil escaping from the house and running with the knowledge that someone was pursuing her. That ending would suggest that someone was going to place Sybil in another institution because once branded insane women—indeed, people in general—can never lose that label.

Guy’s explanation of the events was the hardest part of the story to read for several reasons. First, I felt like Alcott was destroying the beauty of her piece. Second, I felt like I was being taken by the hand and lead through the dark places of the story, the places where my imagination could fill in the situation, and Alcott was illuminating them to reveal circumstances that I did not like. All of the mystery was sucked out of the story.

Before the story was ruined, I really liked it. It was difficult to read about such a strong young woman being so thoroughly sublimated. Indeed, because she was a strong woman, she was more vulnerable to her uncle and the doctor’s attack. Of course a woman who speaks her mind must be insane.

Gah, what a disturbing story.

D’Arcy’s psychology and characterization of her characters is troublingly accurate. Lulie—what a ridiculously appropriate name, by the way—is portrayed in such a way that the reader continues to doubt her sincerity as Campbell does, but not so much so that the reader cannot imagine that Lulie has not turned a new leaf, if you will pardon the cliché. Or that she is simply young and naïve but not vindictive. Most likely this young woman is a nymphomaniac, so caught up in her fantasies that she destroys herself.

However, D’Arcy encourages the reader to question the conditions of Lulie’s suicide. Was it accidental or intentional? As tiring as Mayne’s monologues have become by that point, he presents a somewhat believable argument that perhaps Lulie did not realize that the chamber she was about to fire was loaded. As skilled as she seemed with guns, however, I’m inclined to think that she knew that the chamber was full.

As disturbing as Lulie can be in the story, I found Mr. Campbell’s behaviour even more unsettling. D’Arcy presents this man as very uptight, very sexually-repressed, and very English. He lectures Lulie that,

to all right-thinking people, a young girl’s kisses are something pure, something sacred, not to be offered indiscriminately to every fellow she meets. Ah, you don’t know what you have lost! You have seen a fruit that has been handled, that has lost its bloom? You have seen primroses, spring flowers gathered and thrown away in the dust? And who enjoys the one, or picks up the others? And this is what you remind me of – only you have deliberately, of your own perverse will, tarnished your beauty, and thrown away all the modesty, the reticence, the delicacy, which make a young girl so infinitely dear. You revolt me, you disgust me. I want nothing from you but to be let alone.

Campbell’s description of a woman’s purity—not just her virginity, but her “purity”—is highly idealized. The speech seems to suggest that he would consider a woman defiled if she neglected to lower her eyes from a man’s gaze. This idealization of women’s chastity and modesty leads him to torment Lulie to the point of suggesting that only her suicide would convince him of her love for him. She does kill herself and yet he still is not convinced of her affection.

And what if she wasn’t a nymphomaniac? What if she was truly in love with Campbell, in whatever form of love a woman of her age and disposition could manage? The story also has the undertone that a woman with a promiscuous past, or even a rumored promiscuous past, can never redeem herself, even in death.

I’ve read this story four times and I don’t like the conclusions that I have made. This story seems to suggest that women cannot survive in the wilderness by themselves and that Indians are stubborn and stupid. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Fréchette is trying to indicate that men underestimate women’s abilities.

However, the portrait she paints of the widow and her children intimates that the men’s suggestions that she rejoin her people are not unwise: “The nursing baby turned its head from the brown breast and looked up with listless eyes which seemed to fill the wan little face”; “As they neared the widow’s camp they could see her fishing, with her gaunt children crouched about her in an old canoe” And the comment that “The sick baby had sunk to sleep, and was drawing the long, peaceful breaths of that perfect rest which a weak creature enjoys when held in strong arms” indicates that the man holding the baby has a strength that the mother, who held it only moments before, does not.

There is a something of a switch in typical gender roles in this story. Besides an allusion to breastfeeding, the widow does not display very stereotypical feminine qualities. She is quite stolid and unemotional, while the men seem more nurturing. Upon seeing the baby, the man feels compelled to take the child in his arms. And the exploring party donates supplies to the widow with “willing hands and aching hearts.”

This short story is kind of like The Sound of Music only without the kids, the singing, the Nazis, or the optimistic ending. In fact, the ending is pretty bleak. But besides those things, it’s exactly the same.

The main character has two lives: Camille and Sister Josepha. As Camille, she has no parents, no history. She appeared at the nunnery when she was three and the only information the nuns could wrest from her was the name Camille. The name might not be her own. When Camille is confronted with the possibility of being adopted, she balks.

Camille stole a glance at her would-be guardians, and decided instantly, impulsively, finally. The woman suited her; but the man! It was doubtless intuition of the quick, vivacious sort which belonged to her blood that served her. Untutored in worldly knowledge, she could not divine the meaning of the pronounced leers and admiration of her physical charms which gleamed in the man’s face, but she knew it made her feel creepy, and stoutly refused to go.

Despite Camille’s youth, she seems to understand the power dynamic between herself and this man who leers at her. She understands her vulnerability to him if she agreed to the adoption. The whisperings of other girls living at the convent suggest that even the priest admires her beauty, “linger[ing] longer in his blessing when his hands pressed her silky black hair.” Confronted with these men who seem to lust after her, she begs the Mother Superior to allow her to enter the convent and become Sister Josepha, also seizing control of her sexuality.

She quickly becomes bored with the life of a nun, of the self-repression and submission, and a brief encounter with a sympathetic young man seems to augment her desires to leave the nunnery, causing her to make a feeble escape plan. But the night before her escape, she overhears two other nuns talking about her and she is reminded that she has

No name but Camille, that was true; no nationality, for she could never tell from whom or whence she came; no friends, and a beauty that not even an ungainly bonnet and shaven head could hide. In a flash she realised the deception of the life she would lead, and the cruel self-torture of wonder at her own identity. Already, as if in anticipation of the world’s questionings, she was asking herself, “Who am I? What am I?”

Without her habit, she feels as if she has no identity. As Sister Josepha she belongs to God and the convent, but as Camille she has no family or friends. She also recalls that her beauty is a vulnerability. Reminded of these things, she does not escape the following day at High Mass, rather she confesses, “j’ai beaucoup péché par pensées – c’est ma faute – c’est ma faute – c’est ma très grande faute.”

The situation of the main character potentially represents the limited options available to all women at the time this story was written. Camille may choose to make herself vulnerable to the sexual desires of men by leaving the convent or to remain in an equally sublimating environment. As a nun, at least she has an identity and degree of protection from lascivious men. Unfortunately, she blames herself for her vulnerability, as if she is at fault for her good looks and her orphaning. Her confession makes her sound like a rape victim who blames herself for “asking for it.”

In this early example of the Japanese essay, Shonagon lists characteristics, habits, etc. that she finds hateful. Most of these annoyances are articulated in a sentence, maybe two, thus the essay tends to have a bit of an abrupt feeling as Shonagon jumps from one annoyance to the next. The brief paragraphs are tied together with a common theme, but Shonagon neglected, indeed didn’t feel the need, to create a flow to the piece. This list feels very much like a list.

According to the nice little introduction to Shonagon and this work provided in my mighty book of essays, “Hateful Things” is one of many lists that Shonagon made in her journal. The editor praises Shonagon in his introduction as “an unapologetic maverick—an outspoken, truly independent woman.” While I’m not inclined to disagree, one must remain aware that these pieces were written in a personal journal, presumably not intended for public consumption. Therefore, Shonagon might have felt more comfortable discussing her views on the etiquette of her lovers than she would in a more public arena.

“Hateful Things” does provide a portrait of a fiercely opinionated individual, unafraid of revealing her quirks and her snobberies. She also demonstrates something of an obsession with the pretenses of societal expectations. It would be nice if the earliest female writer included in this collection ruminated on, I don’t know, deeply philosophical things, like the plight of women or hermit crabs in her respective society, but I suppose I shouldn’t expect every woman to be a premodern example of a feminist.

In “The Passover Guest,” Aleichem explores the importance of storytelling. The narrator “was wild with curiosity to see the guest who didn’t understand Yiddish, and who talked with a’s” and he “puffed up with pride as [he] follow[ed] my father and his guest to [his] house, and feel how all [his] comrades envy [him].” At dinner, the guest impresses the entire family by simply stating his name, Ayak Bakar Gashal Damas Hanoch Vassam Za’an Chafaf Tatzatz. A man who possesses such a long last name must be a man of great distinction. The stranger supports the family’s suspicions by telling stories of a land of great wealth and beauty from where this man supposedly came.

Had I been in this family’s position, I would have been skeptical if someone told me of a land where houses are made of gold and silver and jewels line the streets. But to this family, these stories coupled with the stranger’s mystery become more important than reality. When the stranger reveals his true identity by robbing the family, the boy narrator mourns the loss of his dreams of the magical place that the stranger described more than he regrets the loss of his parents’ material wealth.

The land that the stranger describes sounds very similar to one of the places Candide and Cacambo travel to in Voltaire’s Candide. Coincidence?

“The face of love.”

So love is someone who is completely and utterly dependent upon you? Someone whose wet blankets you change several times daily and expects a reward for wetting them. Someone who needs you to carry her up the stairs. Someone who wakes you three times during the night to use the bathroom. Someone who never leaves, who you won’t let leave, and always loves you.

JoAnn’s almost ex-husband doesn’t seem much unlike the collie in this essay. He persistently calls JoAnn, expecting her to reaffirm his decision to leave her, to tell him where something is, or how to perform some task. The difference between the husband and the collie? The collie still loves JoAnn and will never leave her. Which is probably why JoAnn hesitates to put the collie to sleep. Besides the fact that she loves the collie and will miss the dog when she is gone, blah blah blah love-your-pet-cakes.

But JoAnn also has a crush on….her boss. I can’t remember his name. And ultimately he is a distant figure, not really needing JoAnn for anything. They work together, but he is not totally dependent upon her. JoAnn’s friend, whom she seems to love in a platonic way, is also more self-sufficient than JoAnn. So perhaps her husband conditioned her to think of the dog’s dependency upon her as love (in fact, I believe Beard mentions that her husband called the dog’s look “the face of love”) because it mimics his dependency on her.

All that stuff about the office shooting….yeah, I’m not certain what to do with that. Or “the fourth state of matter” thing.